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THE TABLE 



OF 



THE LORD. 

By the Author of 
"THE LISTENER," "CHRIST OUR EXAMPLE," &c. 



PHILADELPHIA: 
HERMAN HOOKER, 

N. W. CORNER CHESTNUT AND FIFTH STREETS. 
1841. 






T. K & P. G. Collins, Printers, 
No. 1 Lodge Alley. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAP. I. 

PAGE 

On External Ordinances 5 

CHAP. II. 
On the Sacraments 22 

CHAP. III. 
On the Institution of the Lord's Supper ... 36 

CHAP. IV. 

On the Benefits exhibited and received in the 

Lord's Supper 63 

CHAP. V. 

On those who refuse to come to the Lord's Table 81 

CHAP. VI. 

Of those that are afraid to come 97 

CHAP. VII. 
Of those that come unworthily 113 

CHAP. VIII. 
Of those that come worthily 132 



CHAP. IX. 

PAGE 

Of those that have faithfully received the Sa- 
crament 149 

CHAP. X. 

Of those receiving for the First Time . . . . 175 



Meditations and Prayers 201 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 



CHAPTER I. 

ON EXTERNAL ORDINANCES. 

God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him 
must worship Him in spirit and in truth. The 
bended knee, the sacramental sign, the worded 
formulary and stated service were not devised 
for Him. He knows what we want before we 
ask, and needs not that any man should tell him. 
He knows what we are before it has been mani- 
fested in thought, or word, or deed — before one 
thought betrays the yearning of our affections — 
one word confesses the persuasion of our minds 
— or one act exposes the principle that reigns 
within us. Nay, the mere voiceless conscious- 
ness of the soul is not necessary to Him: He 
knows our love or hate before it knows itself: 
He knows — how much! that we have never 
known, of the heart from which He requires 
this spiritual worship. " When thou wast un- 
der the fig-tree I saw thee." — Saw what? not 
the man Nathanael in the act, as he probably 
was, of prayer; this would not have surprised 
Nathanael into an immediate recognition of his 
2 



6 ON EXTERNAL ORDINANCES. 

diety. Jesus saw under the fig-tree a chosen 
disciple who had not yet known his Saviour, 
unconsciously made ready to choose him and 
confess him when he appeared. " Rabbi, thou 
art the Son of God." All the discovery was 
on NathanaePs part; the Master had known 
his servant under the fig-tree — and long — how 
long before! "Before I formed thee in the 
womb, I knew thee." — " According as he hath 
chosen us in him before the foundation of the 
world." He sees the love that never saw itself, 
and accepts the unconscious service. "Lord, 
when saw we thee an hungered and fed thee?" 
He feels the hatred that knows not its own ob- 
ject: "Who art thou, Lord?" "I am Jesus of 
Nazareth, whom thou persecutest." He accepts 
the faith that doubts of its own existence — 
minute as a grain of mustard-seed; and how he 
estimates the guilt of sins unconsciously com- 
mitted, is apparent in the sacrifices appointed 
for them under the Mosaic dispensation. 

It is not for Deity, then, that the manifesta- 
tions and expression of devotions are required. 
It is not for himself God has appointed forms 
and places and symbolic signs, nor to himself 
he has adapted them. Mark here the pride 
and absurdity of human reasoning. We hear 
it said, "What does God care for forms and 
ceremonies? What can it signify to Him, who 
reads the heart, whether I pray in one place or 
another, or any where at all, if I live under a 



ON EXTERNAL ORDINANCES. 7 

sense of dependence upon Him? Is there any 
charm in the posture of the body, in the sprink- 
ling of water, and muttering of words, and set- 
ting apart of days and sanctifying of places? — 
Every man is before God what he is in his 
heart, in spite of creeds, and formularies, and 
institutions of religion; irrelevant all to the 
nature of the Eternal Spirit; and what have 
they to do with the spirit of a man?" We 
answer, no more than the paper on which our 
words are written, and the characters in which 
they are expressed, have to do with the 
thoughts and feelings they convey from the 
mind of him who writes, to the mind of him 
who reads. Religious ordinances are the me- 
dium of communication God has appointed be- 
tween himself and us, suited, not to His nature, 
but to ours. In earthly language, by material 
images and with sensible signs, the Deity holds 
communion with his earth-born creatures, and 
chooses to receive communications back again. 
It was left for the intellect of fallen man to 
discover that they are superfluous, contemptible 
— to mock at the simple machinery of the for- 
bidden fruit, by which the first movement of 
sin was to be detected: to cavil at the similitude 
of earthly passion ascribed to the mind of the 
impassible God, of joy, and grief, and anger, 
and repentance; above all, to pour out the full 
vial of his scorn, the very spleen of his indig- 
nant reason, against that great device, that mys- 



8 ON EXTERNAL ORDINANCES. 

tery of godliness — God manifest in the flesh. 
Were we informed what was the necessity of 
submitting Deity to mortal sense, of working 
out redemption with material instruments amid 
sensible things, rather than in mental and 
spiritual abstractions, it might help us to dis- 
cover why God had joined, and required us to 
join, the outward and visible sign of devotion 
with the inward and spiritual grace, alone 
essential, and alone acceptable to Him. Mean- 
time it is enough for the submitted intellect to 
know, that He has so appointed — that He does 
so require — and that He accepts, not the ordi- 
dances, but our spiritual worship in them: or 
rather all in Christ — apart from whom the emo- 
tions of the heart and the adoration of the under- 
standing, are of no more value than the flexions 
of the knee and the utterance of the lips. 

From the beginning God has instituted sacra- 
mental signs; material emblems of spiritual 
things; memorials and witnesses between him- 
self and man; pledges of promise, and tests of 
obligation. Hard by the tree of knowledge, 
which tested his obedience, stood the tree of 
life, its blessing and reward. The lusting eye, 
the profaning hand, transgressing instruments 
of the guilt-stirred spirit, should have been 
instruments of prevention; for there, within 
touch and sight, stood the pledge ^nd emblem 
of the life they were to forfeit. Those senses 
through which the criminal desire was engen- 



ON EXTERNAL ORDINANCES. 9 

dered, when the woman saw the tree that it 
was pleasant, should have been the safeguards 
of her innocence. Sense was not meant for a 
base handmaid to immortal mind; a defence- 
less inlet by which the soul's strong hold was 
to be betrayed and taken. That opening had 
its outworks — it had its own peculiar guard, 
and should have tended to the soul's defence. 
If the woman had looked upon the other tree, 
sense would have helped her to the memory of 
God, and all the bliss she was putting to the 
venture. 

In the great moral dislocation of the fall, 
every faculty took its own course of wrong; 
one to its pride, the other to its sensuality — 
agreed in nothing but to depart from God. 
Mind went to war with matter, judgment with 
feeling, intellect with sense; what was once 
combination, became contrariety, and man was 
left at variance with himself; a thing so shat- 
tered and broken, that no finite power can 
make its parts agree, or fit them once more to 
a whole. And thus it is, that while the pride 
of reason affects to despise all outward ordi- 
nances and visible demonstrations of piety, 
feeling is prone to cling to them too much; the 
one decries the help that sense affords, the 
other loses all spirituality in it. But God, the 
wise, the merciful, when he determined to re- 
cover and renew his fallen creature, had regard 
to each of his dispersed faculties, and suited his 



10 ON EXTERNAL ORDINANCES. 

ministration to them all. Those perverted 
senses through which the tide of corruption 
now flowed in with overwhelming force, sink- 
ing the soul in deeper and deeper night, were 
not given up by him, to be the exclusive minis- 
ters of evil; material instruments, seduced and 
seducing as they had become, were not so aban- 
doned, that they should no longer have a voice 
to speak for God, or witness of his violated 
laws. Indeed when the divine image had de- 
parted, and the living soul, having put itself to 
death, proceeded to bury itself in the things of 
time and sense, man became so earthly, so ani- 
malized a creature, that the ministration of sen- 
sible things was found best adapted to his dulled 
intellect and blighted feelings. The work of 
redemption was begun in signs and shadows of 
the things to come: in typical sacrifices and 
ceremonial service; every truth was exhibited 
under some sensible image, and every promise 
ratified by some external pledge. "It shall 
come to pass," says the Lord to Moses, after the 
most impressive exhibition of his will, with all 
the blessing and the curse attached, " It shall 
come to pass when the Lord thy God hath 
brought thee in unto the land whither thougoest 
to possess it, that thou shalt put the blessing 
upon Mount Gerizim, and the curse upon 
Mount Ebal." We might have thought, that 
with all the supernatural evidences with which 
they were surrounded, the presence of God upon 



ON EXTERNAL ORDINANCES. 11 

the mercy-seat, the Urim and Thutnmin by 
which his mind was known, and all the mira- 
culous interpositions of his power, there could 
be no occasion for such memorials to bring to 
mind the sanctions of the law, no need of ma- 
terial pledges of his threats and promises. 
" Speak unto the children of Israel, and bid 
them that they make them fringes in the borders 
of their garments throughout their generations, 
and that they put upon the fringes of the border, 
a ribband of blue; and it shall be unto you for 
a fringe, that ye may look upon it, and remem- 
ber all the commandments of the Lord, and do 
them." "How unnecessary! Could they for- 
get the awful sentence that had just been exe- 
cuted upon the transgressor of the law? How 
ostentatious! Better write the law upon their 
hearts than upon their garments." Some rea- 
soners would have said so; just as they say now, 
that it is better to be religious in heart than to 
make great profession of it, by separation from 
the world, observance of ordinances, and attend- 
ance upon sacraments. God thought otherwise. 
He knew the heart of man — he knew that the 
time would come, as it did come to the Jews, 
when the divine ordinances would be perverted 
and made the substitute for spiritual worship — 
when they would make broad their phylacteries 
and enlarge the borders of their garments, 
while they made the law of none effect through 
their traditions. And he knew the time would 



12 ON EXTERNAL ORDINANCES. 

come, as it is come to us, when the pride of 
man's intellect would revolt against all forms 
and institutions of religion, and make a boast 
of the spirituality of the gospel, while breaking 
its plain commandments in neglecting what has 
been ordained. But God yields no more to 
man's pride than to his sensuality: they are 
equally offensive to him, and equally in oppo- 
sition to his will. To our weakness only he 
has bent himself; to our ignorance he has 
adapted the lessons of his wisdom, and to our 
imbecility the workings of his power. He does 
not require of us now the pure worship of 
heaven, but the humble tuitiveness of ignorance 
and simplicity: as little children " desire ye the 
sincere milk of the word that ye may grow 
thereby." He has brought down his high, and 
pure, and spiritual religion to the condition of 
an earth-born, earth-bound creature, preparing, 
but ill prepared as yet, for a sublimer worship. 
To help our infirmity, and restrain our licence, 
he has most graciously appointed, and through 
all time required, external aids and manifesta- 
tions of devotion, outward and visible signs of 
inward and spiritual grace. 

First, the Sabbath; remembrancer once of 
the finishing of creation's work; remembrancer 
now of the finishing of redemption's harder 
work: sweet emblem heretofore of the believer's 
rest in Christ; sweet foretaste now of our eter- 
nal rest: the Sabbath has been instituted from 



ON EXTERNAL ORDINANCES. 13 

the beginning, unchanged as the gracious pur- 
pose that ordained it; the blessing of man's in- 
nocence, the solace of his fall, the pledge, and 
symbol, and means of his recovery. « I gave 
them my Sabbaths, to be a sign between me 
and them, that they may know that I am the 
Lord that sanctify them/' One seventh day 
the sentence of labor was recalled, the expulsion 
from Eden was as it were rescinded, that man 
might return and hold sweet communion with 
his God; remember what he had been, and be 
re-assured of what he will be. But even this 
institution, so gracious in the design, so delight- 
ful in the enjoyment, so beneficial in its eifects; 
this dew of heaven on the arid earth, this breath 
of immortality in a dying world; even this finds 
no acceptance with fallen humanity. Wisdom 
disputes it, vice hates it, and independence 
treads it under foot. Religion can do very well 
without it; and spirituality does not so suffer 
under the deadening influence of week-day oc- 
cupation, as to welcome the refreshment of the 
Sabbath service! 

Preaching through an appointed ministry, is 
another institution that has existed from the 
beginning, at least of the economy of redemp- 
tion. Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophe- 
sied of judgment and of grace to come. Noah, 
the second sole progenitor of the human race, 
was a preacher of righteousness to his genera- 
tion; and throughout the Jewish dispensation, 



14 ON EXTERNAL ORDINANCES. 

there were men of God set apart and separated, 
to be the oral instructors of his people. " Thou 
hast appointed prophets to preach of thee/' 
Nehemiah vi, 7. " The Lord has anointed me 
tp preach good tidings/' said Isaiah. " Preach 
to it the preaching that I bid thee/' said the 
Lord to Jonah: an office distinct then, it would 
appear, from the officiating priesthood of the 
temple, and always existing, though peculiarly 
characteristic of the gospel dispensation. In 
the New Testament, preaching is so specifically 
ordained to be the standing means of conver- 
sion, is so universally commanded throughout 
all times and places, and so manifestly blessed 
by the accompanying spirit of God, that it is 
only another proof of the rebelliousness of man's 
heart, when any can be found to undervalue it: 
to say that it does not signify what we hear, or 
whether we hear at all: or whether the willing 
hearers be supplied with zealous and enlight- 
ened preachers, or the appointed preachers be 
duly sanctified and fitted for their office; as if 
the conduct of the public services and adminis- 
tration of religious rites were all that is essen- 
tial in the office of a minister. I am sure the 
Scripture gives no sanction to such an opinion. 
To preach and to baptize is the united com- 
mission, and there is no intimation given that 
one is of less importance than the other. 
" How shall they believe on him of whom they 
have not heard, and how shall they hear with- 



ON EXTERNAL ORDINANCES. 15 

out a preacher?" As the neglect of the Sabbath 
has always marked the growth of immorality 
and irreligion in the world, so indifference to 
preaching has ever attended the decline of 
spirituality in the church: and however any 
man's fancied experience may exalt itself 
against his Maker's provision for him, I believe 
the healthful condition of every individual soul 
is materially affected by the " word preached/' 
as a medium through which God has chosen to 
communicate with man; — sufficient without it 
as would be the influence of the Holy Spirit and 
the written word, had God been pleased to 
make them so. 

A visible external church, in which his name 
should be professed, his appointed ordinances 
duly administered, and such order and disci- 
pline maintained, as should be suitable to the 
times and circumstances, was no doubt a very 
early institution of divine wisdom, for mutual 
assistance in a spiritual course, and the benefit 
of each other's gifts and graces. It has been 
supposed that such a communion is intimated 
by the casting out of the first open transgressor 
from the society of God's people. Genesis iv. 
And more plainly, when in the time of Enos it 
is said, "then began men to call upon the 
Lord," perhaps "to call themselves by the 
name of its Lord;" a professing church openly 
united for the service of God; a separation 
rendered necessary by the increasing numbers 



16 ON EXTERNAL ORDINANCES. 

of the wicked, and their more open disavowal 
of their Maker. However this may be, we 
know that God did establish for himself at 
length, an outward and visible church, to bear 
witness to his name in an idolatrous world, 
and exhibit the tokens and emblems of redeem- 
ing love; admission to which, by circumcision, 
was open to all men, and to his people indis- 
pensable. 

When these older things were ready to pass 
away, the Christian church, with its clearer 
light and more spiritual worship, established 
by the apostles under the immediate inspi- 
ration of the Spirit, took its place. At no 
time, as it appears to me, was this external 
church identical with the invisible church 
of God, although containing it. All were 
not Israel who were of Israel; and when we 
consider that there was a Judas at the first 
administration of the Christian Sacrament; and 
many professors in the apostolic church who 
walked disorderly, who crucified to themselves 
the Son of God afresh, and whose destruction 
was sure, I cannot think otherwise of a visible 
church, than as the net let down into the sea, 
to gather of all kinds, both good and bad, for 
the better preservation of the former. Ill in- 
deed does it become us to despise such aid and 
encouragement as church-membership affords, 
and is by God intended to afford. We may 
have our opinion as to where and what is this 



ON EXTERNAL ORDINANCES. 17 

external church. I do not think it can be better 
defined than by the Nineteenth Article of the 
Church of England. "The visible Church of 
Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the 
which the pure word of God is preached, and 
the Sacraments be duly ministered according to 
Christ's ordinances, in all those things that are 
requisite to the same." If this definition is just, 
it follows that nothing of man's devising or re- 
quiring, however really wise and beneficial, can 
make or unmake a Catholic church, or hold 
men of necessity within it, but by the assent of 
their conscience. However painful to every 
Christian mind are the separations and divi- 
sions upon mere external forms, where all are 
one in Christ, so sadly characterising the pre- 
sent times, and whatever be the sin of such 
divisions on any less than conscientious grounds, 
we cannot presume to say, of any one church 
exclusively, that it is the church of God, to 
which men ought to join themselves. But this 
I think we may say confidently, that they who 
are careless about uniting themselves with any 
church, or refuse to communicate with any, 
because they find none perfect, do set at nought 
the merciful provisions of God for their spiritual 
welfare, and despise one of his positive and 
permanent institutions. 

Most beneficent, most necessary, and most 
imperative upon all men, are the Holy Sacra- 
ments, ordained by Christ himself, as a medium 
3 



18 ON EXTERNAL ORDINANCES. 

of communication between him and us, a means 
in which, and through which, his grace may be 
received, his salvation commemorated, and his 
promises confirmed. In entering upon this 
subject, I feel, and shall feel, through all the 
following pages, the tender ground on which I 
am to tread. Truth itself is one — indivisible, 
invariable, incapable of difference or diversity. 
I cannot think it correct to say of persons who 
differ, that both may be right: it is as impos- 
sible as that there be more than one right 
line between any two given points. The dis- 
sentients may be partially right, or equally 
wrong, or there may be no real difference in 
the mind, while they differ in expression: or 
they may be so far correct, as that contempla- 
ting the truth in a different point of view, and 
through a different medium, there is, in the 
mental vision of each, that which they describe, 
though diverse in their statements. Two ar- 
tists drawing from different positions, will pro- 
duce totally different perspective, and equally 
correct: but in that case, neither draws the 
object as it is, but as he sees it; and no one 
supposes the object to be diverse from itself. 
The probability is, considering the weakness of 
our comprehension, and the vastness of the 
truths to be comprehended; the poorness of 
human speech, and the d illness of human hear- 
ing, to receive and to convey the mind of God, 
the earthly atmosphere through which every 



ON EXTERNAL ORDINANCES. 19 

beam of heavenly light must pass, the blindness 
of the eye that transmits it, and the perverted- 
ness of the mind that finally receives it, the 
probability I think is, that while God secures 
his own purpose by making the truth suffi- 
ciently manifest to every single eye and willing 
mind — light still increasing unto perfect day — 
no one in this twilight world has so clear and 
exact a vision of any thing, as to make those 
who differ necessarily wrong; which would be 
the case, if any one's conceptions were the per- 
fect truth. From this imperfection it has come 
to pass, that while there are points of revealed 
truth, about which the children of God, taught 
by one Spirit, are every where agreed, there 
have been at all times lesser points, about 
which they have differed; or seeming to agree, 
would be found to differ, could each produce 
the exact impression of his own mind. Of those 
who kneel at the same altar, and break the 
same bread, using in perfect honesty the same 
form of words — united in one faith, one hope, 
one love — members together of one body, even 
of Jesus Christ: could each communicant lay 
open his impression, feeling, and understand- 
ing of these ceremonies, I believe a great diver- 
sity of form and coloring would be found, 
whilst all are vitally and essentially agreed. 
And thus it does always happen, whenever any 
one submits to the public eye his own impres- 
sion of divine truth, he may express himself as 



20 ON EXTERNAL ORDINANCES. 

cautiously as he can, some fello \v -christian will 
be shocked; he may speak as mildly and mo- 
destly as he can, some brethren in Christ will 
be offended; as moderately as he can, and yet 
some tender spirit will be wounded. Perhaps 
the reader or the hearer who feels any of these 
things, does not always know how deeply the 
preacher or the writer feels it too — how often 
the fear of man, or the love of man, would 
close the lips, or take away the pen, the spirit 
shrinking from the collision it anticipates. I 
have no authority to say what a preacher of 
the gospel feels; but if I may guess one thing 
by another, had he no impulse to obey but 
that of nature, were not a necessity laid on 
him to preach the gospel of Christ, he would 
shrink from the wounds he has to give and to 
receive, as much as the coward dreads the field 
of battle. 

If I proceed with the subject I have entered 
upon — if I state what I understand by the 
Sacraments ordained by Christ himself; what I 
expect when I approach his holy table; what I 
mean, when I make use of the prescribed 
words, and what I believe and feel when the 
rite has been performed; I know that I shall 
cross the persuasion of many — I do not mean of 
the world, who hold not like precious faith with 
ourselves, that we expect of course, and intend 
no otherwise — but of those who are joined 
together in holy communion of the body and 



ON EXTERNAL ORDINANCES. 21 

blood of Christ. Some will think perhaps, I fall 
short of the truth in estimating the design of 
the Holy Sacraments, or misstate their real 
nature, or hold myself too free of human autho- 
rity respecting them: Some I am sure will 
think I take too lax a view of the right of 
admission to them, while others may feel that 
I am too exclusive in the benefits received. 
Very possibly I may seem to exaggerate, and 
be the occasion of discouragement to some who 
have never found it what I may describe. None 
of this is intended, though it is all foreseen. I 
write nothing inconsiderately, or as it were at a 
venture; if any thing is mistaken, it is neverthe- 
less the well-examined, well-established persua- 
sion of my mind, not the mistake of haste or 
carelessness; if any thing is deficient, or any 
thing in excess, my error is the communicant's, 
rather than the writer's: for mine are thoughts, 
not words; I put down nothing that I have not 
realised, as I believe in the administration of 
the holy ordinance. I am induced to write, 
notwithstanding this anticipation, because I 
trust that for one who is wounded by the awk- 
wardness of the administrator, many will be 
healed by the divine truths exhibited; the mis- 
takes will be mine, and the truths will be 
God's; and I trust that he will bless the one, 
the other notwithstanding. 



22 



CHAPTER II. 



ON THE SACRAMENTS. 



By consent of all Protestant churches, the 
Sacraments are but two; and these so di- 
rectly ordained and commanded by Christ 
himself in the New Testament, as to preclude 
any dispute against their authority, whatever 
differences may have arisen respecting the na- 
ture of them, or the mode of administration. 
" Go ye therefore, and teach all natious, baptiz- 
ing them in the name of the Father, and the 
Son, and the Holy Ghost." " This do in re- 
membrance of me." These two sacraments, 
therefore, are of divine obligation, and are not 
left to the choice of any church communion, to 
adopt or otherwise, neither to the will of any 
man, to do or to neglect. Although the respon- 
sibility of such a neglect will be more fully no- 
ticed in a subsequeut chapter, we would here 
observe how lightly this obligation is estimated, 
as being of God, distinctively, and independently 
of any human sanctions. That much more de- 
ference is actually paid to the authority of man 
in them, than to that of God, is manifested in 
stricter observance of the one sacrament, than 
of the other. Very few parents neglect to have 



ON THE SACRAMENTS. 23 

their children baptized: the law of man requires 
it, and there are civil inconveniences attached 
to the neglect of it; but many never bring, or 
care to bring their families to the table of the 
Lord. Nay, they would not consider them- 
selves Christians, if they had not been baptized: 
but no man's heart misgives him that he is not 
a Christian, because he does not, and will not, 
partake of the body and blood of Christ in the 
Lord's Supper. And yet the authority is no 
greater and no less for the one than for the 
other, nor the command more positive and un- 
restricted. Most earnestly we would press this 
reflection upon those, of whom we fear there 
are many, who take their Christianity for grant- 
ed, yet never have attended or desired to attend 
the communion; a communion equally unavail- 
ing indeed, with the sacrament of Baptism, to 
make us Christians: but as professed members 
of the Christian church, we have never perhaps 
considered why we attach so much importance 
to the one ceremony, and so little to the other; 
placed as they are, on exactly the same ground 
of benefit and obligation. In many cases the 
reason ultimately discloses itself; it is the au- 
thority of man, and not of God, that is respected 
in either sacrament. Men will not call us 
Christians, or give us a decent burial, unless we 
be baptized; but they will not inquire if we 
communicate or not; unless it be for some civil 
purpose enforced by law, in which case we are 



24 ON THE SACRAMENTS. 

willing to comply. And thus our very com- 
pliance with either ordinance, is shown to be 
an act of obedience to man, rather than to God, 
who has appointed both. 

The nature and design of the sacraments are 
more indirectly, but not less surely gathered 
from the word of God. Our own church thus 
defines them: "Sacraments ordained of Christ 
be not only badges and tokens of Christian 
men's profession, but rather they be certain, 
sure witnesses, and effectual signs of grace and 
God's good will towards us, by the which he 
doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only 
quicken, but also strengthen and confirm our 
faith in him." These are indeed the words of 
man, therefore imperfect, and therefore fal- 
lible — to be interpreted by the judgment of 
man, and accepted or rejected as they shall 
seem to be in conformity or otherwise with the 
word of God. Bnt to my apprehension, nothing 
can be added to make the definition more ex- 
plicit, or more fully expressive of the divine 
purpose in the institution of sacramental signs. 
They are not mere acts of worship, obedience, 
and acknowledgment on our part, by which 
we make profession, before God and each 
other, of the Christian religion. This they 
are, but not this only. The man who performs 
either of these rites, does make the profession, 
and is responsible on his part, and as far as he 
is able, to fulfil it to the utmost letter of his 



ON THE SACRAMENTS. 25 

engagement; how solemnly taken; how deeply- 
obligatory! It does not indeed create the obli- 
gation: whatever was due to God after the 
ceremony, was due to Him before, and would 
be so though they had never been instituted, 
or never complied with. This it is most neces- 
sary that we bear in mind: because if men do 
not in argument, they do in their hearts deny 
it; and from the one sacrament, at least, re- 
main away, lest they make an engagement 
they do not intend to keep: and probably 
would do so from the other, were it not per- 
formed without their cognizance. Baptism and 
the Lord's Supper are not arbitrary institutions, 
to create a relation between God and man which 
does not exist without them. Every man to 
whom the word of God has come, is bound to 
believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy 
Ghost, to renounce the works of darkness, and 
become the faithful follower of Jesus Christ, 
whether in baptism he has promised it or not. 
Every one who hears the invitation of the 
gospel, to seek salvation by the blood of Jesus, 
is as much bound to renounce himself and trust 
in the righteousness of Christ, as if he had pro- 
fessed to do so at the altar. It was not for 
himself, to strengthen his own claims, that God 
appointed these ceremonies: it was to impress 
them on the memory of his creatures; to convict 
us from our own lips of the refusal of salvation; to 
take from us the pretence with which the soul 



26 ON THE SACRAMENTS. 

deceives, and then destroys itself — the pretence 
of ignorance; to certify to us the new relation- 
ship under which the redemption of Christ has 
brought us, by affixing as it were our own seal 
to a deed, which is equally valid if we refuse to 
sign it. "Say unto them the kingdom of God 
is come nigh unto you," — if they receive you 
not, say, ' Notwithstanding be ye sure of this, 
the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.' 
Your refusal to make these confessions, vows 
and promises, cannot change the case; but they 
will be witnesses between God and you, that in 
refusing to do so, you openly resist his authority; 
or doing so falsely, you confess the truth that 
will eternally condemn you, adding the guilt of 
a false profession to your other sins. We might 
think, of some persons who neglect these holy 
ordinances, that they take this last to be the 
only damning sin; so heedless are they how 
many they commit in their carefulness to avoid 
it. In what part of the decalogue do they learn 
that hypocrisy is a greater sin than disobedience? 
though far be it from us to advise that it should 
be added. 

But the sacraments are more than badges and 
tokens of a Christian profession; they are vows, 
acknowledgments and confessions going out 
from man towards God. There is a reciprocity 
in them. They are witnesses on our behalf, as 
well as on God's; they are pledges of His pro- 
mises, as well as of His claims; they exhibit, if 



ON THE SACRAMENTS. 27 

I may so speak, his signature affixed, as well as 
ours, to all the engagements of his covenant. 
Unchangable, eternal love! how little need of 
this to make thy promise sure, and give security 
to keep thine own. All is but the indulgence of 
our weakness— a provision for our mistrust and 
unbelief — for creatures, who, after all that thou 
hast done, can mistrust thee — can forget thee! 

Sacraments then, are witnesses and signs, 
"sure witnesses and effectual signs," in which 
we may find confirmation and security of God's 
gracious intentions and good will towards us. 
When the waters of baptism are sprinkled, we 
are re-assured of God's faithfulness to his pro- 
mise, to pour out his Spirit upon all who ask it. 
When the names of the triune Deity are uttered, 
we are certified of their eternal covenant to save. 
When the bread and wine are distributed, it is 
to confirm the fact of Christ's vicarious suffer- 
ing, of his body indeed broken, and his blood 
shed for us. If it be asked, how can such mere 
ceremonies increase our sense of security, or be 
any confirmation of the fact; we say, because 
God himself has appointed them to be so. In 
condescension to our nature, He has acted after 
the manner of men, who having agreed upon 
certain forms of attestation or contract, feel 
security in the due execution of them: as the 
scripture speaks — "An oath for confirmation is 
to them an end of all strife; wherein God, 
willing more abundantly to show to the heirs of 



28 ON THE SACRAMENTS. 

promise the immutability of his counsel, con- 
firmed it by an oath." The administration of the 
sacraments is, as it were, a continual repetition of 
this oath in a manner divinely appointed. Heb. 
vi, 17. To the end that "we might have strong 
consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold 
upon the hope set before us." If they answer 
not this end, it is not because we have too much 
faith to require such confirmations, but because 
we have too little to make use of them. 

But more than this, the sacraments are not 
only memorials of what God has done, and 
pledges of what He intends to do, but they are 
the means and instruments by which he does 
what he intends; doth "work invisibly in us, 
and doth not only quicken but also strengthen 
and confirm our faith in him." 

The work of salvation, from the first move- 
ment of desire in the natural heart to the per- 
fecting of the saint in glory, is of the Father, 
through the Son, and by the agency of the Holy 
Spirit. Every intermediate means, of which 
there are many, is nothing in itself, and nothing 
by itself. The tools and instruments which the 
Spirit uses to hew the stony heart of man, not 
only were useless till He gave them edge and 
point adapted to his purpose; but they are use- 
less again as soon as he lays them out of his 
hand. I believe that God has not imparted to 
any thing, not even to his own precious Book, 
an inherent and abiding virtue to communicate 



ON THE SACRAMENTS. 29 

salvation in any of its parts; its beginning, or 
progress, or perfection. All are but instru- 
ments that He blesses in the using, not that he 
has blessed to a perpetual use; for then would 
the use be never separated from the blessing, 
and the immediate interference of the Spirit 
might be dispensed with. It is a necessary dis- 
tinction; because misconception upon this point 
has been a fruitful source of error and confu- 
sion, issuing sometimes in the grossest supersti- 
tion. When God had appointed burnt-offerings 
and oblations, as means through which faith 
was to accept and confess the blood of atone- 
ment thereafter to be shed, the carnal Jews 
believed that the power to take away sin had 
been divinely invested in the blood of bulls and 
goats; and can hardly now relinquish, when 
they become converts to Christianity, the per- 
suasion that some value is continued in these 
offerings, though their typical use is at an end. 
x\gain, when God had appointed a visible church 
and consecrated ministry to be means of grace 
and agents of the Spirit, the Church of Rome 
proceeded to think that salvation had been 
vested in the church itself, and secured to all 
who died within its pale. Protestant churches 
have followed the same course: and because 
Baptism is made a sign of regeneration, and 
when accompanied by the regenerating Spirit, a 
seal unto salvation, protestants to no inconsi- 
derable extent, have taken the sign for the 
4 



30 ON THE SACRAMENTS. 

thing signified, the instrument for the influence 
that might or might not accompany it; and at- 
tributing to Baptism duly administered an in- 
herent power to regenerate the soul, have de- 
termined that every baptised person is a true 
Christian and a child of God, born anew of the 
Spirit. And though our church gives no coun- 
tenance to the delusion, we may not be sure 
that it pertains exclusively to the Church of 
Rome to believe that the consecrated bread, 
pressed between the sinner's dying lips, has a 
divine charm in it to save the soul. Short of so 
gross a superstition, it would be difficult per- 
haps to trace out the various modifications of 
belief in some mysterious influences pertaining 
to the Sacraments, inherent and inseparable; 
opinions widely distant from each other, and 
yet connected by an unbroken chain of error, 
through which the Christian church has wound 
itself first into, and then out of the doctrine of 
transubstantiation. There is no similar confu- 
sion in the understanding about common things. 
We do not mistake the pebbly bed through 
which the water flows for the stream that runs 
through it — nor the stream itself for the spring 
from which it rises. We seek the water- 
course for the water's sake, in places where it 
has been used to flow: but we look for the 
source of those waters in some distant spring, 
which may suspend its issues and leave their 
courses dry, and then woe to the traveller who 



ON THE SACRAMENTS. 31 

thinks to drink thereat. Grace flows through 
the sacraments, but the sacraments are not 
grace. Salvation is by grace, but grace is not 
our Saviour. From Him, that eternal source, 
the precious waters flow, only so long as He 
will pour them out, and only whither He will 
please to send them. The sacraments are the 
channels by which His blessed influences are 
wont to run, and thither He bids the thirsty 
come and drink, but they are nothing more. 
They are not means of salvation; and if they 
were, the believer has no need of them; he 
wants no salvation but the sufficient blood of 
Christ; and no means to an end that was 
accomplished when Jesus "made an end of 
transgression, nailing it to his cross," — when 
He said, "It is finished," and gave up the ghost. 
But they are means of that which we want 
always — of which the more we have, the more 
we desire the increase, and fear the diminution; 
of which the supply of yesterday is no suf- 
ficiency for to-day, nor provison for to-mor- 
row: they are the means of grace. Not only, 
as I conceive, are the sacraments outward and 
visible signs of inward and spiritual grace; for 
the sign or symbol of a thing does not imply 
the presence of the reality; but they are very 
frequently the means and instruments in the 
hand of the Spirit, by which the inward and 
spiritual grace is conveyed from God into the 
soul of man; whether the first gift of the Spirit 



32 ON THE SACRAMENTS. 

for the conversion of the sinner, the new birth 
unto righteousness exhibited in Baptism; or 
the fruit of the Spirit to the perfecting of the 
saint, sanctification unto life eternal, more 
properly pertaining to the Lord's Supper. 
This value, it is true, the Sacraments have in 
common with all other means of grace ordained" 
of God; such as preaching, prayer, and reading 
of the word. And yet there seems to be 
something special in them, as appointed and 
blessed to a distinct and special purpose: the 
one, to set the seal of adoption upon those 
whom God has chosen to eternal life, separat- 
ing them from an ungodly, unbelieving world; 
as circumcision was heretofore the partition 
wall which separated Israel from the nations of 
the Gentiles; the other to be the food and 
nurture of his adopted ones within their Fa- 
ther's house; as heretofore the manna fell 
within the sacred precincts of the camp, or 
more exactly as the paschal-lamb was distri- 
buted to all who by circumcision had been 
brought within the line of separation. The 
one sacrament exhibits Christ, and when made 
efficacious by the Spirit, conveys Christ, as the 
principle of life, or rather life itself, to the soul 
that was aforetime dead; the other exhibits 
Christ, and if duly and worthily received, com- 
municates him, as the aliment and sustenance 
of the life he has imparted; not figuratively, 
but verily and indeed taken and received in the 



ON THE SACRAMENTS. 33 

due administration of it. Still, I think what- 
ever is special in the sacraments, as distin- 
guished from other means of grace, must be 
looked for in the special blessing likely to 
accompany ordinances so appointed, and not in 
any power vested in them to convey the bless- 
ing, different from what pertains to other 
means of grace: since not only are the sacra- 
ments continually performed without their 
effects; but these effects are as frequently, 
without the sacraments, produced by other 
means. In the apostolic age, I imagine the 
regeneration of the soul, and its conversion to 
the faith, took place before the rite of baptism 
was performed: whereas now, I suppose it 
much more frequently takes place in after life. 
And with reference to the Lord's Supper, we 
know that the spiritual feeding of the believer 
upon Christ, is not peculiar to it: but may be 
realized as well in the most secret communion 
of the soul with the Beloved. The word of 
God, and prayer, and preaching, are equally 
appointed to these ends, and as frequently 
blessed to the effecting of them. In short, 
they are altogether nothing — absolutely nothing, 
but the two-edged sword, which the Captain of 
our salvation has wrought and burnished for 
himself, by the right hand of his power, his 
all-conquering Spirit, to separate his people 
from the world and force a way for them to 
glory. He takes it up when He will, and lays 
4* 



34 ON THE SACRAMENTS. 

it down when He has done with it; and it lies 
cold, and motionless, and useless, till He works 
with it again; for it cannot be weilded by any 
mortal hand. 

And if mortal hands have no power to give 
efficacy to the holy sacraments, it is manifest 
they can have none to take the efficacy away; 
therefore I think our church has most wisely 
determined, that while (he unfit communicant, 
being duly warned and instructed, takes upon 
himself the whole condemnation of his false pro- 
fession, so also the ungodly minister must bear 
the iniquity of his profanation, but cannot con- 
vey pollution to the sacred rite that he adminis- 
ters. " Forasmuch as they do not the same in 
their own name, but in Christ's, and do minis- 
ter by his commission and authority, we may 
use their ministry both in hearing, the word of 
God, and in receiving of the sacraments. Nei- 
ther is the effect of Christ's ordinance taken 
away by their wickedness, nor the grace of 
God's gifts diminished from such as by faith 
and rightly do receive the sacraments ministered 
unto them; which be effectual because of 
Christ's institution and promise, although they 
be ministered by evil men." It is a feeling 
very natural, to like to have these solemn rites 
performed to us by a righteous man; and in- 
asmuch as they are accompanied with prayer, 
and " the prayer of a righteous man availeth 
much," it may not be an unreasonable satisfac- 



ON THE SACRAMENTS. 35 

tion; but we should be cautious of attaching an 
undue importance to this, as if the most hal- 
lowed hand could add any thing to the value of 
baptismal grace, or of the sacramental emblems 
of the body and blood of Christ. Neither should 
we suffer our conscience to be distressed, and 
our faith disturbed, or as has been sometimes 
done, forego the ordinances altogether, because 
they are administered by unrighteous hands. 
If these divine rites themselves are nothing, but 
by the present blessing of the Lord, how much 
less than nothing is the earthly hand by which 
they are presented, and impotent to bring that 
blessing or prevent it. " Who shall bless what 
God has not blessed ?*and who shall curse what 
God has not cursed?" Our insufficient value 
for the precious blood of Christ, and all the 
power of his death, is in no way more disclosed 
than by the undue importance we attach to in- 
cidental circumstances, connected with the out- 
ward administrations of religion or the inward 
reception of it in our hearts: to form and disci- 
pline on the one hand — and to mere frames and 
feelings on the other; as if the power of His 
infinite and all-sufficient merit could suffer di- 
minution or augmentation by the machinery 
made use of in its application to the soul: an 
unconscious pharisaism very hardly surmounted 
even in the bosom of the believer, who thinks 
that he is trusting Christ alone; but very, very 
seldom realizes the sufficiency and security of 
what he trusts. 



36 



CHAPTER III. 

ON THE INSTITUTION OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

The Jewish festival of the passover is con- 
sidered to have been the type and parallel of 
the Christian sacrament of the Lord's Supper, 
as circumcision was of that of baptism. No 
uncircumcised person could eat of the paschal 
lamb; and no Christian churches, I believe, ad- 
minister the sacrament to one who has not been 
previously baptised. To tHe rite of circumcision 
there was no exclusive limitation; the heathen 
captive or servant bought with money, or any 
stranger dwelling in the land, might enter the 
Jewish church by this ceremony, and thus 
become entitled to its external privileges. (Exo- 
dus xii.) " One law shall be to him that is 
home-born, and unto the stranger that dwelleth 
among you." No qualification is mentioned as 
necessary to admission, but that of desiring it, 
and nothing is specified as an exclusion to those 
who did so desire. "When a stranger shall 
sojourn with thee and will keep the passover to 
the Lord, let all his males be circumcised, and 
then let him come near and keep it; and he shall 
be as one that is born in the land." To the 
chosen people of Israel no choice was allowed. 



ON THE LORD'S SUPPER. 37 

" Every man child among you shall be circum- 
cised. It shall be a token of my covenant be- 
twixt me and you." Herein we have election 
but not exclusion. In the feast of the passover 
there was an exclusion; no one could partake of 
it unless he made an open profession of the Jew- 
ish religion by the initiatory rite of circumcision; 
the outward sign of separation between the peo- 
ple of God and the nations of the world: " For 
no uncircumcised person shall eat thereof." It 
hence appears that the one ordinance being de- 
signed for all who desired to become members 
of the church of God; the other was especially 
reserved to those who already were so. On his 
chosen people they were equally imperative; 
for it is said of the passover as of circumcision, 
that they who partook not of it at the set times 
should be cut off. Both these rites were a por- 
tion of that ceremonial law which, with all its 
terrors and penalties, has been done away. In 
tracing the analogy between them and the 
Christian Sacraments, by which they have been 
superseded, not continued, we must be careful, 
to keep this in mind, lest we bring ourselves 
into bondage. The law had a shadow of good 
things to come, but not, as we have, the very 
image of the things as they have since appeared. 
The whole of these shadows passed away to- 
gether, when more spiritual ordinances were 
substituted for them. We shall bring great 
confusion into our minds if we suppose that 



38 ON THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

some part of the figurative and typical dispen- 
sation remains in force, when the rest has passed 
away. The doctrines of the Jewish church 
remain for ever, for they are one with ours: 
there has from the beginning been but one reli- 
gion; the one only Gospel of our Lord and Sa- 
viour Jesus Christ. We cannot drink too deeply 
of their molten sea, or feed too often on their 
paschal Lamb, or follow too closely the spirit of 
their sacrifices. But the forms and ceremonies 
ordained for the foreshowing of the Gospel, be- 
come mere superstitions if engrafted on the New 
Testament dispensation. The word of God 
makes no exception when it declares that these 
things are passed away. In this view, and in 
comparison with the more spiritual exhibition of 
the gospel, the apostle calls them " carnal ordi- 
nances, beggarly elements;" and such they had 
become; for God had done with them and re- 
jected them; though once they had been divine 
and holy institutions. The Church of Rome, I 
apprehend, has derived no few of its supersti- 
tious practices from the Jewish ritual: as the 
apostle foresaw, when, cautioning the Colossians 
against some of the most prominent superstitions 
into which that church had fallen, he says, " Let 
no man judge you in meat or in drink, or in re- 
spect of an holy-day, or of the new moon, or of 
the Sabbath days, which all are a shadow of 
things to come — but the body is of Christ." 
We derive our authority for Christian ordinances 



39 

from the New Testament exclusively: and ap- 
peal to the older things as illustrative of our 
Sacraments, only so far as they are recognised 
in the New Testament to be analogous: by 
drawing the comparison closer than is intended, 
we should be in danger of inducing legal de- 
pendence or superstitious dread. With this in 
mind, we may observe, that circumcision and 
the passover, beside being outward and visible 
signs of inward and spiritual grace, in the man- 
ner of our sacraments, were also types and sha- 
dows of those very sacraments, and in that cha- 
racter exhibited their nature and design; whence 
much spiritual instruction may be expected from 
the consideration of them. Our subject confines 
us to the passover, in its likeness and relation- 
ship to the Lord's Supper. 

The Jewish passover, the first great yearly 
festival, was commemorative of the deliverance 
of Israel from Egyptian bondage, and the sword 
of the destroying angel— prefigurative of spiri- 
tual redemption by Jesus Christ, the Lamb slain 
from the foundation of the world in the purpose 
of Jehovah, and actually to be slain on earth 
when the fulness of time should come. The 
Christian Sacrament of the Lord's Supper is 
simply commemorative of this last event; — "to 
show forth the Lord's death till he come:" for 
the continual remembrance of the sacrifice of 
the death of Christ, and of the benefits which 
we receive thereby. The ceremonies peculiar 



40 ON THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

to the passover, distinguishing it from other 
festivals, were the slaying of the Paschal Lamb, 
the eating only of unleavened bread, and the 
waving of the sheaf of first-fruits on the mor- 
row after the feast. The Paschal Lamb is the 
universally-acknowledged type of Jesus Christ. 
The New Testament recognises the similitude. 
" Ye are redeemed with the precious blood of 
Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and with- 
out spot: who verily was fore-ordained before 
the foundation of the world, but was manifest in 
the last times for you." 1 Peter i, 19. 

The blood of the slain lamb was not to be 
spilt on the ground, but gathered in a basin as a 
precious thing; no doubt to signify the value of 
that which the Scripture calls the precious blood 
of Christ, 1 Peter i, 19, but which the unbe- 
liever rejects, and would make to be shed in vain 
— "eating and drinking their own damnation, 
not discerning the Lord's body." The typical 
figure was probably in the mind of the Apostle 
when he says, " They have trodden under foot 
the blood of the covenant." Heb. x, 29. It 
was sprinkled with a bunch of hyssop on the 
lintels and door-posts of the houses, in memory 
of the night when the destroying angel turned 
his sword from every habitation on which the 
blood was found; typically for the sake of the 
slain lamb, and the blood of sprinkling, really 
for the sake of Him who is the substance of 
the shadow; a beautiful figure of the atone- 



ON THE LORD'S SUPPER. 41 

ment, in its application to the soul by faith. 
The angel of destruction has gone, and goes 
continually, and at the last day will go finally, 
through every land — through the living and the 
dead — he makes but one distinction — acknow- 
ledges but one mark. Is the blood of the 
paschal lamb upon the door, or is it not? Has 
the blood of Christ been sprinkled through faith 
upon the conscience, or has it been neglected 
and trodden under fool? 

The eating of the paschal lamb signified our 
spiritually feeding upon Christ by faith, and 
sacramentally in the Lord's Supper. As Christ 
is therein to be received, "not unworthily," so 
in the passover, all was to be done in a pre- 
scribed order. They were to eat it standing, 
with their staves in their hands, their shoes on 
their feet, and their loins girt, a posture of 
action, as those that go a journey. Though 
this circumstance might be peculiar to the first 
passover, it is strikingly figurative of the posi- 
tion of a believer in the Egypt of this world, 
from whose judgments he is to be exempted, 
and whose bondage he is to escape. It calls 
immediately to mind the language of the Gospel, 
"Gird up the loins of your minds." 1 Peter i, 
13. Be ready to act, to follow — "To follow 
the Lamb whithersoever he goeth." " This is 
not our rest:" however we be fed and pro- 
tected by the Lord our passover, and strength- 
ened and refreshed by the sacramental emblems 
5 



42 

of his body and blood, we take them as the 
traveller takes his fare — prepared for departing 
— "Here we have no abiding city, but we seek 
one to come." Heb. xiii, 14. 

The passover was eaten with sour and bitter 
herbs. Christ is fed upon with many a bitter 
thought of sin, and many a painful remem- 
brance of His sufferings on our behalf. Re- 
pentance and godly sorrow are ever mingled 
with the sweet exercise of faith and love, and 
are indispensable to the due receiving of the 
Christian communion. Perhaps it was thus in- 
timated also that we have a cross to bear before 
we reach our crown, and cannot reign except 
we suffer with him. They ate it with leaven — 
seven days afterward they might eat no leaven. 
The New Testament gives us the interpretation 
of this, " Purge out the old leaven, and let us 
keep the feast with the unleavened bread of 
sincerity and truth." 1 Cor. v, 7. " Let us 
keep the feast, not with the leaven of malice 
and wickedness." 1 Cor. v, S. Falseness in 
principle and wickedness in the life, are the 
leaven with which our passover must not be 
eaten; the infecting, souring, corrupt admixture, 
which will make the spiritual food unavailable, 
and the sacramental bread a condemnation. 
For seven days: the scripture emblem of a com- 
pleted period — to us the completion of all time. 
We must eat no more leaven, after partaking of 
the body and blood of Christ, "Resolve to lead 



43 

a new life." Walking henceforth in his most 
holy ways. " Serving the Lord in holiness and 
righteousness all the days of our lives." 

The whole of the lamb was to be eaten. We 
must take Christ and the salvation of Christ 
entire. u We do not presume to come to this 
thy table, merciful Lord, trusting in our own 
righteousness." We are not at liberty to re- 
ceive a part and reject a part; to feed upon 
Christ for pardon, and upon ourselves for right- 
eousness; to trust his death and our own merits 
jointly; nor yet to accept the security of his 
redeeming blood, and refuse the sanctifying in- 
fluences of his Spirit. We are not at liberty to 
receive the doctrines of Christ and neglect his 
precepts; neither to receive his precepts and 
reject his doctrines. 

The whole family were to eat it, or if too 
small, more than one family together, indi- 
cating that this festival, like the Lord's Supper, 
was an act of social worship and church com- 
munion; the whole church of Christ being one 
family, and one body in him. Our church has 
recognised this character of the sacrament, as 
being a social, not a private act of devotion, by 
requiring that it shall not be administered unless 
a sufficient number of persons are assembled; 
" that is, except four, or three at the least, com- 
municate with the priest;" — it is to be a public 
celebration among the living, not a mysterious 



44 ON THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

ceremony performed in the lonely chambers of 
the dying. 

Lastly, the passover, as before remarked, was 
allowed to no uncircumcised person. The mark 
of church-membership, like every thing else in 
the Jewish ordinances, was an external one: for 
it does not appear that any test was required of 
the state of mind of the recipient. This is in 
perfect accordance with the whole typical insti- 
tution. The adoption of Israel according to the 
flesh, was a figure of the adoption of grace; not 
a figure of the world at large, or the external 
church, in which are the godly and ungodly 
mixed, but of the invisible church of Christ, the 
elect of God, chosen of him and precious. In- 
dividually, an Israelite of the circumcision, 
might or might not be of the family of Abra- 
ham, according to the faith; but they were all, 
as born of Abraham according to the flesh, 
members of the typical election, and as such 
entitled to partake of the typical privileges of 
that church. Now, like the true church of 
Christ itself, the mark of adoption is spiritual 
and not always discernible to the eye of man. 
But the exclusion is really as distinct and posi- 
tive as it was formerly: none but the circum- 
cised in heart, the true believer, can spiritually 
eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ.* 

* The above illustration of the passover is principally 
extracted from Mather on the Gospel of the Old Testa- 
ment. 



45 

Such was the signification of the Jewish 
passover, and such the resemblance it bears to 
the Christian ordinance of the Lord's Supper; 
pointing, the one forward, and the other back- 
ward, to the same event; and both to the 
benefits we receive thereby*. No mention, I 
believe, is made of the passover in the New 
Testament after the death of Christ; from which 
we may infer that no Hebrew converts to 
Christianity continued to keep it; and if some 
erroneously did so, it was among the things 
against which St. Paul remonstrates when he 
says, " Why, as though living in the world, are 
ye subject to ordinances?" Again, "How turn 
ye again to the weak and beggarly elements 
whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? 
Ye observe days, and months, and times, and 
years. I am in doubt of you." The substance 
had come, and the shadows had passed away: 
Christ had died, and the Christian commemora- 
tion of his death had been instituted by himself 
in the last supper. The memory of the former 
things is alone left for our admonition, upon 
whom the ends of the world are come. We 
turn from the shadow, to contemplate the very 
image of these things; of the mystery of re- 
demption. 

The narrative of the Last Supper is given 
with very little variation by three of the evan- 
gelists, the blessed partakers of the holy feast; to 
which, if we add the account of the apostle, 
5* 



46 ON THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

who not being an eye-witness, received it from 
the united, and by that means more perfect tes- 
timony of those who were so; or rather, as he 
himself declares, 1 Cor. xi, received it of the 
Lord, we shall have all the testimony the 
Scriptures afford respecting the first institution 
of the ceremony, and tbe design and application 
of it to the church for ever. 

Matt, xxvi, 17. "Now the first day of the 
feast of unleavened bread the disciples came to 
Jesus, saying unto him, Where wilt thou that 
we prepare for thee to eat the passover? And 
he said, Go into the city unto such a man, and 
say unto him, The master says, my time is at 
hand; I will keep the passover at thy house 
with my disciples. And the disciples did as 
Jesus had appointed them; and they made 
ready the passover. Now when the even was 
come, he sat down with the twelve, and as they 
did eat, he said, Verily I say unto you, that one 
of you shall betray me. And they were ex- 
ceeding sorrowful, and began every one of 
them to say unto him, Lord, Is it I? And he 
answered and said, He that dippeth his hand 
with me in the dish, the same shall betray me. 
The Son of man goeth as it is written of him: 
but woe unto that man by whom the Son of 
man is betrayed! it had been better for that 
man if he had not been born. Then Judas, 
which betrayed him, answered and said, Mas- 
ter, is it I? He said unto him, Thou hast 



ON THE LORD'S SUPPER. 47 

said. And as they were eating, Jesus took 
bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it 
to the disciples, and said, Take, eat, this is my 
body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, 
and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; 
for this is my blood of the new testament, 
which is shed for many for the remission of 
sins. But I say unto you, I will not drink 
henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until the 
day when I drink it new with you in my Fa- 
ther's kingdom. And when they had sung an 
hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives." 
The only variation from this narrative is, that 
St. Luke introduces at the supper some con- 
versation that the other evangelists give as 
having passed afterwards; and St. John, omit- 
ting the sacramental ceremony altogether, 
enters into other particulars of the deepest 
interest, by which light is indirectly thrown 
upon its mysteries. Let us dwell long upon 
this sacred narrative; let us consider, and re- 
consider these divine words; the time, the 
company, the circumstances that attended it, 
and the events that followed. It will be a bet- 
ter preparation for the holy sacrament than any 
thing that man can write, or churches dictate. 
To those who, for the first time, are preparing 
to receive the communion; to all who still think 
some peculiar preparation necessary, or are 
wishing for some better understanding of it be- 
fore they go, I would say, " This do; read these 



48 ON THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

inspired narratives, one or all, with the apostle's 
repetition in the epistle to the Corinthians; read 
them, sentence by sentence, word by word, 
with close meditation and internal prayer; 
think them, pray them, over and over again; 
that so, by the Spirit's help, your minds may be 
enlightened, your hearts made ready, or your 
fears allayed. All that we can say to help each 
other, all that the wisdom of the church can 
add for the instruction of her members, is but 
a draught from this pure source; it is worth 
nothing unless it was drawn thence. The 
Spirit itself will not teach us apart from the 
written word. His light, which fell direct upon 
the souls of them that wrote it, now comes to 
us reflected from its pages. God does permit, 
and does intend that we should take advantage 
of each other's gifts, and inquire of these who 
are before us, to be encouraged by their expe- 
rience, and warned by their mistakes, and per- 
suaded by their example; but as all human in- 
struction must be brought to the test of Scripture 
before it can be relied upon, we shall do well to 
begin where our teachers themselves began. 
We had better study fully the written word of 
God upon the subject of the sacrament, before 
we appeal to the opinions of men, or consider 
the formularies prepared for us to use. And 
may the light of God be with us while we at- 
tempt it! 
"When the even was come." "The same 



49 

night in which he was betrayed," the last even- 
ing of the Saviour's life, the last hours before 
that midnight, in which the Son of God was 
given into the hands of sinners, to do with him 
what they list; the moments immediately pre- 
ceding the intensest anguish of his soul. How 
should we wish to know, if we did not know, 
what occupied that evening! If we have had 
a friend, a brother, who has died away from us, 
do we not inquire with intensest interest, what 
passed in the closing hours of life? what he did 
last, before the agonies of death withdrew his 
attention from external things? His latest care, 
his final conversation, whom did it regard, and 
what was it about? Do we not know the thrill 
of sensibility with which we hear, or wish to 
hear some reference to ourselves, in the dying 
accents of one we love? The Saviour's last 
care, his latest occupation before he entered the 
final conflict with the powers of darkness, was 
to dictate words for us — to establish for us a 
sacramental rite — an external ordinance, a cere- 
mony — can we believe it? which we neglect or 
perform with indifference, or perhaps have ne- 
ver yet performed at all. It was no time to be 
occupied with things indifferent, with a matter 
that does not signify, in which we may do as 
we like, something that can safely be put off or 
let alone. If Satan has ever told us so, let this 
question sink deep into our hearts, Was it a 
moment for the Son of God to occupy himself 



50 ON THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

with what it is not necessary for Christians to 
observe? 

"He sat down with the twelve.'' It is well 
to consider who the guests were, that we come 
not uninvited to the feast, neither think our- 
selves excluded without cause. The twelve 
had confessed the man Jesus to be God and 
Lord; the Messiah that was to come, the Sa- 
viour of mankind, as far as the light of their 
own Scriptures had revealed him: and this they 
did in opposition to the rejection of him by their 
people, and the mystery of his humiliation, 
which they in no wise understood. Chosen by 
the Saviour when they knew him not, and 
called to follow him they knew not whither, by 
faith they obeyed the call, they believed his 
words, they trusted his promises, and gave up 
all that they had for his sake. This is their 
own appeal, " Behold we have forsaken all and 
followed thee." Every accepted, every wel- 
come guest at the Lord's table, makes a similar 
confession, is in a similar position. Chosen of 
God, and called by his Spirit out of a world 
that lieth in wickedness, they have devoted 
themselves to be the followers of Jesus Christ, 
they believe him, they trust him, and forsake 
whatever would interfere with their devotion to 
his service. It is the profession required of all 
who approach the altar, and we are admitted 
upon our profession, to a feast of which, never- 
theless, we can be no partakers, if it be a false 



ON THE LORD'S SUPPER. 51 

profession: there was one at that first commu- 
nion who received no benefit thereby. 

But the eleven — were they sinless guests? 
were they strong in the Spirit, and matured in 
faith, and entitled by their holy lives, and undi- 
vided hearts, to a participation in the feast? 
Were they ready to follow their master to prison 
and to death? They said so, and they meant 
it, for their hearts were single, and their love 
was true; but it did not prove so; twelve hours 
had not passed before one denied his master, 
and the rest forsook him. It is for sinners, then, 
miserable sinners, that this feast was instituted; 
for the weak in faith, for the untried in love, for 
the uncertain in conduct, for those who had no 
strength, no constancy, no faithfulness in them- 
selves, to follow their Master for a single day. 
Jesus knew this, but he did not refuse them: he 
did not desire them to wait, as we think fit to 
wait, till they were holier, and stronger, and 
surer of themselves. He gave them the bread 
and wine to strengthen and refresh their souls, 
that they might grow thereby into that which 
they did afterwards become, devoted, sanctified, 
and able indeed to follow him to prison and to 
death, as several of them did in after-times. It 
does not appear that he withheld it even from 
Judas. Judas made the same profession as 
others of the twelve; he seemingly obeyed the 
call to follow Christ, and ranged himself among 
his chosen ones: most probably he sinned 



52 ON THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

against his own conviction that Christ was in- 
deed the Son of God, preferring this world's 
gain before him. Only to the Master were the 
secrets open of the traitor's heart: one whom 
he had chosen was a devil, that the Scriptures 
might be fulfilled. He kept the secret, and suf- 
fered him to pass as his disciple, and as such 
administered to him the outward and visible 
signs of the communion, the bread and wine, 
no verity, by his false heart received, of the in- 
ward and spiritual grace. 

The administration of the Sacrament to all 
who profess and call themselves Christians, 
without any satisfactory knowledge of their 
hearts, has been an occasion of much contro- 
versy and separation in the churches. Tender 
spirits have been deeply pained, and some have 
even excluded themselves from our commu- 
nion, because they feared to administer or to 
partake the sacred emblems, with those who 
give no token of being members of Christ, and 
children of God, although baptized to be so. 
Our church has been much questioned upon 
this subject, and other churches have devised 
various plans to keep their communion pure. 
It appears to me that the scruple is unnecessary, 
as the precaution is unavailing. It must be 
unavailing, because when all is done that can 
be devised, to test the faith of the communicant, 
and discover the seal of adoption upon his 
brow, he may deceive us, if not himself: the 



ON THE LORD'S SUPPER. 53 

life and conversation have as often denied the 
public examination or wiitten experience, as 
the renewed baptismal vow; which alone our 
church requires. Since after every precaution, 
the profession must be taken, I do not perceive 
why the mode of profession accepted in our 
church, is not as sufficient as any other. The 
most powerful exhortations are made, and the 
most awful warnings given; a form of words is 
prescribed, which no unfit communicant can 
speak with truth. A confession of faith or pro- 
fession of Christ, could hardly be devised more 
full and close, than that which every communi- 
cant is required to utter before the elements are 
delivered to him. What can man do more than 
leave the forswearer to his peril? It was what 
Jesus did as man, though as God he saw 
through all. To show that he was not de- 
ceived, he exposed the traitor's guilt at the very 
time of the celebration; in one gospel it is' said 
just before, in the others just after, the distribu- 
tion of the bread and wine. Judas was not left 
to believe that the bread was blest to him, 
although he ate it; nor the wine, although he 
drank it; nor we, that he derived any benefit 
from them, administered though they were, by 
the Lord's own sacred hands. If this adminis- 
tration seems to exonerate the church, that, 
giving the impenitent sinner due warning of his 
peril, accepts his profession, and leaves him to 
the judgment of the Almighty, it places in an 
6 



54 

awful light the delusion of that church which 
attaches to the elements a saving efficacy ad- 
ministered in the last moments of a sinful life. 
It was the very moment of the hypocrite's ex- 
posure: it was the consummation of his guilt, 
that, ready in his heart to betray his Master, he 
sat down as a disciple at his table. It was the 
time when Satan took full possession of his soul, 
to make what use of him he would. Did this 
never happen but once? or has the viaticum of 
the Papist, and the superstitious reception of the 
Protestant bread and wine upon the death-bed, 
passed other souls into the hands of him whose 
wages they have taken while they lived. 

" And as they were eating." The first com- 
munion was taken in a sitting posture, after the 
ordinary manner of sitting at meat, whence 
some Christians have made it a point of con- 
science, and even a ground of separation from 
the church, to take the Sacrament in that posi- 
tion. Certainly there is no reason apparent 
here, why we should not take it sitting: but it 
seems a trivial question; kneeling is the posture 
of devotion, and best becomes the position of 
the soul at such a time. The Protestant kneels 
to him whom he addresses, but he makes no 
address to the elements, as that God were pre- 
sent in them: therefore his position cannot be 
construed into an act of idolatrous worship. 

" Take, eat, this is my body." In the words 
addressed by our Saviour to the disciples, there 



ON THE LORD'S SUPPER. 55 

is a very slight variation between the Evange- 
lists; but as we have in the epistle to the Co- 
rinthians the Holy Spirit's exposition of the 
ceremony, the variation presents no difficulty. 
St. Paul says he has received it of God — " That 
the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was 
betrayed, took bread, and fe when he had given 
thanks, he brake and said, Take, eat: this is my 
body, which is broken for you: this do in re- 
membrance of me. After the same manner 
also he took the cup, when he had supped, say- 
ing, " This cup is the new testament of my 
blood — this do as oft as you drink it, in remem- 
brance of me." Where can we learn the na- 
ture of the Sacrament so well as in these few 
words? How dissipate our fears, or warm our 
hearts to love, so well as in the meditation of 
them? 

" Take, eat." But were they prepared? were 
they fit? Jesus did not ask them that ; he had 
not told them to prepare themselves. He had 
chosen them to be his disciples, and they had 
chosen him to be their Lord — their right to 
come was his invitation to the feast, and their 
title to partake of it was his command. " Take, 
eat — take what I offer you — eat what I have 
prepared for you." u Ho! every one that thirst- 
eth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no 
money let him come and buy; buy wine and 
milk without money and without price." 

" Take, eat — this is my body." We will not 



56 

dwell on the errors of a corrupted church, for 
which the only scriptural pretext is derived from 
these words — " This is my body;" as if it were 
not the commonest phraseology of the inspired 
language, to give similitude the form of fact, and 
call the emblem that which it represents. " I 
am the vine — ye are the branches." "They 
drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, 
and that rock was Christ." In the language of 
our Church — "To such as rightly, worthily, and 
with faith, receive the same, the bread that we 
break is a partaking of the body of Christ, and 
likewise the cup of blessing is a partaking of the 
blood of Christ. The body of Christ is given, 
taken and eaten in the Supper only after an hea- 
venly and spiritual manner. And the mean 
whereby the body of Christ is received and 
eaten in the Supper is faith." — Art. xxviii. 
Faith, not in the mysterious efficacy of the bread 
itself, or the wine itself; but in that of which 
they are the emblems — faith in the body of our 
Lord Jesus Christ as broken for us, in the blood 
of our Lord Jesus Christ as shed for us: " Christ 
in us the hope of glory" — " Made unto us sal- 
vation." So fed upon in faith, they are verily 
and indeed received to the strengthening and re- 
freshing of the soul, as .our bodies, not our souls, 
are strengthened and refreshed by the bread and 
wine: — "by the faithful" — and by the faithful 
only: the elements are of no more value than 
they were before their consecration; they ac- 



ON THE LORD'S SUPPER. 57 

quire no inherent efficacy to do us good or harm: 
to them that receive them not worthily, they 
are what they always were, material elements 
that can affect the body only. 

li This is my body which is broken for you." 
A great deal of conscientious scruple about the 
using of these words has arisen in the church at 
various times, and to all that has been written 
and said, we cannot expect to add weight on 
either side. Christ himself used them: and of 
course the inspired apostles used them, in nei- 
ther case addressing a pure communion of accep- 
ted saints. The subject taken fully involves 
the whole disputed question of general and 
particular redemption, with the various shades 
of difference, which I am sure there are in 
men's opinions, between the two extremes. — 
To me it appears quite irreconcileable with the 
plain language of Scripture, to maintain that 
Christ did not, in some sense, die for the whole 
world; that he did not love the whole world 
when he died for it; or that he did not make a 
satisfaction and atonement sufficient for the sins 
of all mankind. Unless we could know what 
would have followed on the first transgres- 
sion, had no redemption been designed, we 
cannot judge how much the world has gained 
by the suspension of its final sentence, by the 
long-suffering and forbearance, the time and 
opportunities, the ameliorations and restraints, 
and providential influences, which are all the 
6* 



58 

purchase of redeeming love,, and paid for by the 
sacrifice of Christ. We cannot estimate how 
much of Adam's forfeiture that prospective sa- 
crifice at once brought back: but we know so 
much as this, that but for the atonement to be 
made for sin, God and man had then been eter- 
nally separated: and whatever passages of love 
and mercy have been between them since, 
are benefits derived from the atonement. In 
what sense Jesus died for the millions who 
never heard of him, and to what extent his 
death may have been beneficial to them, is 
indeed beyond our knowledge: but to say that 
he did not, in any sense, die for those who 
reject him, appears to me a contradiction in 
terms; because if he died only for the saved, no 
one can be guilty of rejecting him. I believe 
that Christ died for the sin of all mankind, in 
so far as sin is not actually their own, but de- 
rived to them from their first federal head — 
thus leaving them freed from the penalty of 
original sin, to answer only for their own trans- 
gressions: with how much light of natural con- 
science or superadded grace, we know not; 
but certainly enough to make them responsible 
for what they do. I believe, also, that by the 
death of Christ a way of reconciliation with the 
Father is opened, leave of approach is given, a 
means of communication is afforded, of which 
every man may avail himself if he will: — 
it has purchased for all of us the right to pray, 



ON THE LORD'S SUPPER. 59 

the right to plead its value in our prayers, and 
ask the application of its benefits to our souls: 
it has opened the portals of heaven to let the 
petition pass, and disposed the Eternal One to 
be attent; how then, can we say he has not died 
for all? Nevertheless, I cannot consider this to 
be the meaning of the words made use of in the 
administration of the Sacrament; but rather that 
Christ meant, and the church acknowledges 
and every believer should understand a great 
deal more than this, when the words are ad- 
dressed to <a congregation of faithful men/ 
When Jesus said, " My body which is broken 
for you — my blood which is shed for many," I 
think he used the words in a sense in which 
they can only apply to those who are, what the 
first disciples were — what we in baptism profess 
to be, and by presenting ourselves at the table 
do pretend to be — members of Christ, children 
of God, and heirs of the kingdom of heaven: in 
scripture language, chosen in him before the 
foundation of the world — called to be saints — 
born again of the Holy Ghost — who walk not 
after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Addressed 
to the faithful recipient of the bread and wine, 
these gracious words do surely mean to say, not 
merely that Christ has died to afford us an op- 
portunity of being saved, but that by his death 
he actually has saved us — that his body broken 
has expiated our sins, that his blood shed has 
secured eternal happiness for us, and that he not 



60 ON THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

only proposes, but engages to preserve our bo- 
dies and souls to everlasting life. In the words 
of our own communion service, " when with a 
penitent heart and lively faith" we receive that 
holy sacrament, we do actually, not prospec- 
tively, " dwell in Christ and Christ in us: we 
are one with Christ and Christ with us:" mani- 
festly a state of present, not of future or proble- 
matical salvation. The difficulty, therefore, re- 
turns upon us: how can these words be ad- 
dressed to a mixed number, of whom the minis- 
ter does not know this to be the case, nor has 
any strong ground for believing it: and who 
in fact do not believe it of themselves, nor so 
much as care to have it so in any serious man- 
ner. I can only repeat my opinion that we 
have the authority of Christ and the apostles 
for taking men upon their profession, and so 
pronouncing on them a benediction which is 
only valid if the profession be a true one. As 
it is said to the apostles in another case — " First 
say, peace be to this house — and if the Son of 
peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it: if 
not, it shall turn to you again." 

" This do in remembrance of me." Blessed 
Jesus, could they forget thee? They had heard 
thy words, such as never man spake — they had 
seen thy works, such as no other man had 
done — thou hadst chosen them, and kept them 
and loved them, even as the Father loved thee. 
Could they forget thee, blessed Lord? Our 



61 

hearts sink within us while we read the words. 
He has suffered for us, he has saved us, he 
lives for us in heaven: He has given us all he 
has — He has given us himself — our present 
life and our eternal joy; and must we be re- 
minded — must we have signs and emblems 
to waken our memory and warm our hearts? 
— He knew it: and He provided them — 
He even requires of us this memorial of his 
death, lest the world forget that he has visited 
to save, and will return to reign. But we do 
not care about it — we do not understand it — 
we are afraid to take it, and we will let it alone. 
Lamb of God, whatever reason we have to be 
afraid, we shall not find it in the memory of 
thee! There had been nothing seen of thee 
but love — nothing heard or known of thee 
but goodness — not one repulsive look to them 
that sought thee — not one refusal to them that 
asked thy help — not a word of discouragement 
even to thy enemies, if they would turn to thee 
again: they who rejected thee were repaid 
with tears; and they who crucified thee only 
with thy prayers. And there has been no 
change. " As oft as ye eat this bread and 
drink this cup, ye do show forth the Lord's 
death till he come/' The lion of the tribe of 
Judah is not in the feast — the judge, the aven- 
ger is not there; but " in the midst of the throne 
a Lamb as it had been slain" — touched with the 



62 

feeling of our infirmities — waiting to be gra- 
cious — "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; 
if any man hear my voice and open the door, I 
will come into him, and will sup with him, and 
he with me." 



63 



CHAPTER IV. 

ON THE BENEFITS EXHIBITED AND RECEIVED 
IN THE LORD ? S SUPPER. 

" Great is the mystery of godliness! God 
manifest in the flesh!" With entire submission 
of the intellect to the "dictum of Scripture, with 
the simplicity of a little child, that comes not to 
argue with its teachers, but to learn; with the 
lowliness of one who is of yesterday and knows 
nothing, willing to become a fool that he may 
be wise, we approach, and invite others to ap- 
proach this great incompassable mystery. If 
there be any of a higher mind, they need not 
follow us, for we cannot help them. Reason 
puts itself to silence at the outset, and thence- 
forward has no more to say; for it tells me that 
the less cannot comprehend the greater; that 
the finite cannot compass the infinite; that there 
is not, and never can be a work of God per- 
fectly and entirely understood by human intel- 
lect. If it be said that God can reveal it to us: 
He does reveal to us what we could not dis- 
cover of his doings, to the extent that our 
understandings can embrace. Or, He can give 
us understanding: He does give us understand- 
ing in a measure, and he increases the measure 



64 ON THE BENEFITS OF 

continually by impartation from himself; and 
perhaps will go on increasing it through all 
eternity; but it will be the understanding of the 
creature still, never commensurate with his 
own, and therefore, I conceive, never sufficient 
to the perfect comprehension of his works. In 
heaven we shall be spirits, but we shall not be 
gods. There are mysteries of God which an- 
gels do not know — and — itself a mystery at 
which we bow our heads in acquiescent wonder 
— there was a secret which the co-eqnal Son of 
God declared He did not know; because, as 
touching his manhood he was inferior to the 
Father, and took upon him, as I suppose, in the 
season of his humiliation, something of the limi- 
tation of fimte being. Proud disputants! climb 
to the lofty summit of the mountains, and tell 
us what you see: cities, and plains, and rivers 
spreading wide, an expanse inconceivable to 
them upon the plain. And what beyond? Re- 
late whence comes the river, and whither goes 
it. A barrier impenetrable bounds your vision, 
and other mountains intercept your view. 
Leave the earth then, and go with the aeronaut 
beyond the clouds; hundreds of miles lie now 
exposed before you, and nothing intervenes to 
bar your vision. Tell us what is doing in all 
that space, so curiously brought within your 
ken. The space is very wide and very won- 
derful, but your eyes can distinguish nothing; 
beyond a cartain limit, it lies an unfeatured 



65 

mass, of which you can tell nothing but that 
there it is. Let us be ashamed for our assump- 
tion and insubmission. God has raised us from 
the midnight ignorance of our fallen nature, and 
given us to see his holy purpose of redemption; 
he has revealed to us the plan and method of 
salvation, and given us to understand its pro- 
gress, and foresee its blessed issue. He has ex- 
panded our finite vision beyond the beginning 
or the end of time, back to the triune Jehovah's 
covenant to redeem, and forward to the eternal 
bliss of the redeemed. But it is the creature's 
eye that is brought to gaze upon the Creator's 
discovered purpose — the bounded, limited capa- 
city of a mortal man, that is to scan this reve- 
lation of the mysteries of God. Well might we 
stand at once confounded and amazed — silenced 
and enraptured, abased and satisfied at once, 
and with Job exclaim, " Mine eye hath seen 
thee, behold I am vile." Enough indeed has 
been revealed to satisfy every feeling and oc- 
cupy every faculty of our souls; straining the 
longing eyes to catch a further glimpse as the 
light of grace arises on the immensitude. Na- 
tural reason sees nothing, absolutely nothing, 
of wisdom, or love, or justice, in the vicarious 
sufferings of Jesus Christ, to the Jews a stumb- 
ling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness; too 
improbable to be taken upon credit, and too 
ureasonable to bear examination. Sooner than 
contend with an unbeliever on this ground, I 
7 



66 ON THE BENEFITS OF 

would admit the whole. God's plan of re- 
demption for the recovery of the fallen world, is 
so improbable, that the wit of man could never 
have invented or conceived it; so unreasonable, 
that the creature who could, prior to its revela- 
tion, have expected or anticipated such an inter- 
position on his own behalf, might have been 
thought insane. But if this most marvellous, 
most improbable and inconceivable device, has 
proved itself fitted to effect its purpose, I think 
the very fact should go to show that it is the 
offspring of a greater mind than his, who can- 
not appreciate it. I am sure we should con- 
clude so in the little sphere of human capability, 
varying as it were a hair's breadth, one above 
another. We do not expect the infant of days, 
and the mean in capacity, to value the produc- 
tions of the learned and the skilful. The me- 
chanic who stands by and sees his machinery 
do the work that he was used to do with ma- 
nual labor, thinks, if he thinks at all, how great 
beyond his own was the power that invented a 
machine of which he understands not the me- 
chanism, still less the principle, but discovers 
the excellence in the results. In the plan of 
redemption, however the natural mind sees not 
even so much as this. Ignorant of the real 
nature of sin and its inseparableness from de- 
struction, and ignorant of the perfection of deity 
which admits not that one attribute should exalt 
itself against another, that justice and truth 



67 

should concede to love and mercy, the sinner 
sees neither danger nor difficulty in his position; 
it requires only an extension of divine indulg- 
ence for the present infirmities of his nature, and 
a grant of divine aid to enable him to overcome 
them. He sees, in fact, no reason why the 
Almighty creditor should contrive so expensive 
and difficult a scheme for the payment of a debt, 
which it was at his pleasure to remit. Even in 
this depth of ignorance, it would become the 
creature to put his hand upon his lips and say, 
How can I judge the plans of the Omnipotent? 
Let him declare to me what he has done, and I 
shall know that therein is wisdom, because that 
He is wise. 

But this he does not. Such a declaration the 
Deity has made, and man, in his profundity of 
darkness, refuses to believe till he has judged it. 
God will not suffer this. I am persuaded he 
will in no instance suffer that a man's reason be 
satisfied, before it is submitted to his authority. 
Hence religion is ever made to begin with faith: 
not sight, not knowlodge, not understanding, 
but belief. And thence I infer, that it is to de- 
part from God's appointed mode of teaching, to 
attempt to satisfy the intellect of the fitness and 
wisdom of the atonement, before it is accepted 
on the testimony of the written word. Convince 
the gainsayer, if you can, that the Scripture is 
the word of God: show him, if you can, the 
plain annunciation of the atonement in it: he is 



68 ON THE BENEFITS OF 

then at the point, at which he must believe the 
testimony, without a question more: and from 
that point forward, but never, as I apprehend, 
before, will the wisdom of the divine purposes 
be unfolded to him, and knowledge be added to 
his faith, and the growing light of grace disclose 
to him as much of the divine purpose of redemp- 
tion, as his capacity, as a creature is capable of 
apprehending. This process cannot be reversed. 
You cannot first convince another, or convince 
yourself, that the substitution of Christ was a 
wise and necessary contrivance, and thence 
descend to accept the revelation of it, because 
you have found it worthy of his wisdom who 
reveals it. " Except ye become as little children, 
ye can in no wise enter into the kingdom of 
God." Our progress in the kingdom of God is 
unequal; different minds are led by different 
paths, and our attainments, under divine grace, 
are considerably affected by the natural bent and 
character of the mind. Next to that simplicity 
of heart, which is the gift of grace, clearness in 
the understanding, and decision in the character, 
are perhaps the greatest gifts to advance the 
life of faith: but whatever varieties be found 
within the kingdom, the entrance is but one, it is 
the same to all. "As little children/' whose 
first lessons are of facts imparted, and received 
as they are told, before they can be subjected to 
the understanding, or verified by experience. 
This done, the reason submitted to divine au- 



69 

thority, and the understanding enlightened by 
the Holy Spirit, there is no faculty, no power 
in man, that may not be brought to bear upon 
the disclosures of revelation. Knowledge of 
God, his wisdom and his ways, are a part of the 
gift of salvation. Little indeed does the awa- 
kened spirit know, on its first reception of the 
Gospel upon divine authority, what it will after- 
wards discern of the amazing wisdom, the over- 
whelming goodness that devised and carries out 
this plan of redemption: little indeed foresee 
how the enlarging intellect will revel in the ex- 
panse before it, to which there is always an hori- 
zon, but never a termination — a limit to vision, 
but none to expectation of what may be beyond; 
and while all he reaches is wisdom, and all he 
glances at is love, the advancing saint has little 
mind to question or dispute against anything 
not yet within his ken. If any of our readers be 
otherwise minded, we can only ask them to go 
back with us, and learn as we have learned, 
the wisdom of the atonement in its efficiency to 
save; the fitness of the remedy in the cure it has 
effected; the loving-kindness of the gospel-scheme 
in the extremity from which it has relieved in 
us; in the hope, and peace, and joy it has given 
in exchange for the desperation of our native 
misery. 

Poor leprous-stricken sinner! go, show thyself 
to the priest, that he may certify thee if thou art 
healed indeed; and if thou art, thou wilt be 
7* 



70 ON THE BENEFITS OF 

more disposed to lay thy reason, and all thou 
hast a sacrifice upon the altar, than to exercise 
it upon the justness and probability of the means 
that have been used to cure thee: if not, such 
speculations will never help thee. Thou must 
go back, and in the simplicity of a believing 
heart, in the attitude of a suppliant, not a dis- 
putant, exclaim, " Lord, thou Son of David, 
have mercy upon me/' The sentence will not 
wait thy approbation of it. " He that believeth 
in the Lord Jesus Christ, shall be saved; he that 
believeth not, shall be damned." "They eat 
and drink their own damnation, not discerning 
the Lord's body." 

The Sacrament is an exhibition of the vica- 
rious sufferings and death of Jesus Christ, and 
of the benefits derived from them, to those who, 
with a true faith and penitent heart, turn unto 
him, and by the power of his Spirit become in- 
corporated with him, in that taking of the man- 
hood into God, which constitutes the great truth 
of Christianity, the eternal mystery of revealed 
religion. In some sense it commemorates all 
that the Jewish sacrifices foreshowed: but as 
the manner of the atonement has now been fully 
manifested in the event itself, those bloody signs 
and figures that exhibited it, are no longer ne- 
cessary; and it appears to me that the Christian 
ordinance, while it certifies the fact of the death 
of Christ, and keeps its verity in mind, more 
minutely exhibits the application of the atone- 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 71 

ment to the soul, and the benefits received there- 
by. It exhibits Christ the sinner's substitute: 
once dead and now alive for us; and we in him 
once dead, and now alive for ever. Once in- 
deed we were dead without him, " for in Adam 
all died," dead souls and dying bodies, both fore- 
doomed to an eternal existence, for its essential 
misery called death. To reverse this half-exe- 
cuted sentence, was the end of the atonement. 
We may think it was very easy; God could have 
forgiven the past, and remitted the remainder of 
the penalty. I do not presume to say whether 
he could or not: but I see that pardon comes too 
late, when the sentence is already executed: man 
was dead: " In the day that thou eatest, thou 
shalt die." Severed from the source and suste- 
tenance of life, cut off from that communication 
of the deity, whence only good can be derived, 
man lay like the trunk of an uprooted tree, which 
keeps for a season the form and coloring of life, 
and puts forth some feeble shoots, as if it were 
alive. Mere pardon would avail little to the 
soul already separate from God, and dead in 
trespasses and sins, unless that which was done, 
could be undone, and the past retrieved. But 
could not God do this too? I cannot tell: but 
mutability is an attribute of weakness: to do 
and to undo, to say and unsay, is the creature's 
shame. In a mere mortal, we require some 
fresh light, or influence, or evidence to excuse a 
change of mind. What light, what influence, 



78 ON THE BENEFITS OF 

what subsequent discovery could act upon the 
eternal mind, that he should unwill to-day, what 
he willed yesterday, and bring to life his slain? 
So much I see, though it is little enough, of 
where the difficulty of man's recovery lay. As 
a moral difficulty, we have an imperfect illustra- 
tion of it in our case as parents; very imper- 
fect, indeed, because our want of foresight has 
part in our embarrassment. To deter our chil- 
dren from an act of disobedience, we threaten a 
certain punishment, which, when the fault has 
been committed, we are very unwilling to in- 
flict: but our word must be inviolate, and our 
authority maintained: against the pleasure of 
all parties, the penalty must be enforced: a sort 
of moral necessity from which the parent some- 
times secretly relieves himself, by bringing in a 
third person, to beg as a favor to himself, or for 
some invented reason, that the culprit may es- 
cape the infliction: no parallel to the plan of 
substitution, wherein the full penalty is inflicted: 
but a faint illustration ot the moral difficulty — 
if we may at all apply that word to deity — how 
God should be just, and yet the justifier of him 
that had sinned. 

We conceive further of the penalties of the 
divine law, that unlike the sanctions of human 
legislation they are not arbitrary appointments, 
but necessary consequences, which it needs an 
interference of power to prevent, but none to 
inflict; misery follows sin: sin itself is misery; 



the lord's supper. 73 

and the soul that sinneth dies of course, with- 
out any measures taken to put that soul to 
death; though divine interference would be 
indispensable to prevent the consequences fol- 
lowing the cause. Without all controversy, 
however, the fact was so; the living were 
dying and the dead were dead; animal life was 
wasting fast away, and spiritual life was already 
in its grave, buried in time and sense. In the 
great work of redemption, the one grave had to 
be opened and the other closed; earth, the 
soul's present grave, must be made to give up 
her dead; and hell, its eternal grave, must close 
her gates for ever. It was necessary that the 
substitute should be one who could not only 
receive upon himself our death, the death of 
the whole world, but could in return communi- 
cate to us his life. We know that to communi- 
cate life is the exclusive attribute of Deity. 

I will not, because I cannot, search into the 
counsels of Jehovah, to judge of the eternal 
covenant in which this exigence was foreseen 
and provided for, and the work of redemption 
undertaken in the vicarious sufferings of the 
Son of God, accepted by the Father, and applied 
by the Holy Spirit. How it was, or why; or 
whether it had been better otherwise, or c^ould 
have been otherwise effected, is not an inquiry 
for us. The very doubt is a trespass upon the 
rights of Deity: the all-wise, the omnipotent, 
the incomprehensible. We receive it on His 



74 ON THE BENEFITS OF 

authority, that so it was; and what it was, we 
learn by the teaching of His most Holy Spirit, 
calling up every power of mind, and thought, 
and will, every feeling and affection of the heart, 
to search out the disclosed purpose, while we 
forbear the hidden mystery. 

The plan of redemption exhibited in these 
precious emblems of the body and blood of 
Christ, was to substitute the Saviour for the sin- 
ner, in such manner that in his passion he should 
bear for us the penalty of death attached to dis- 
obedience, and by fulfilment of the law, earn 
for us the reward of life that had been promised 
to obedience; that which is ours should be im- 
puted to him — considered his; that which is his, 
should be imputed to us — considered ours; as if 
we were really and truly one and the same per- 
son; as by adoption we are said to be "one with 
him" — " in Christ before the foundation of the 
world." Now we know that if any man be in 
Christ, he is a new creature; born in him through 
his pure and spotless life; nailed in him to the 
cross; laid with him in the grave; brought to 
life again in his resurrection, and in his immor- 
tality made alive for ever; the believer is no 
more that son of Adam against whom justice 
has an outstanding account of punishment in- 
curred: "The soul that sinneth it shall die:" he 
is a son of God, to whom justice has become a 
debtor for the reward of righteousness. " This 
do and thou shalt live:" because in the death of 



ON THE BENEFITS OF 75 

Christ the penalty of sin was paid, and in the 
life of Christ the reward of righteousness was 
earned. " For he hath made him to be sin for 
us, who knew no sin, that we might be made 
the righteousness of God in him." 2 Cor. v, 21. 
The future is averted, and the past retrieved; 
what was dead is alive again; what was dying 
is reserved to everlasting life. So simple appears 
to me in the application, that unfathomable 
mystery: "And we know that the Son of God 
is come, and hath given us an understanding 
that we may know him that is true, and we are 
in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. 
This is the true God and eternal life." Faith 
receives it; love knows it; understanding will 
be occupied through all eternity in learning what 
it means. 

But I would here remark, that though I have 
used the word substitute, I do not think it accu- 
rately expresses what we intend. Jesus is the 
sinner's substitute, inasmuch as he does for him 
what he does not and could not do for himself. 
In our stead the Saviour dies and fulfils all 
righteousness for us: and so far substitution ex- 
presses the character of the transaction. But if 
redemption stopped here, it would be insufficient, 
we should be sinners still; and as misery and 
sin cannot be parted, we should be miserable 
still; we should create another hell instead of 
the one his death has saved us from, and the 
heaven his merits have purchased would be no 



76 ON THE BENEFITS OF 

fit dwelling place for us; and, carrying the idea 
of substitution out, it would avail us little that 
Christ were holy and happy, and ascended up 
to heaven in our stead. Human language is 
but poor machinery for the conveyance of divine 
ideas: but union, rather than substitution, is the 
idea to be conveyed, and is the more scriptural 
term; from adhering to the former notion, I think 
it may in some minds have resulted, that they 
consider personal sanctification, as well as meri- 
torious righteousness, to be imputed, not impart- 
ed, to the sinner: that Christ, who is indeed unto 
us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, 
and redemption, is so in the sense of substitution 
rather than impartation, instead of us, rather 
than in us. But if this were so, he must like- 
wise be happy in our stead, and alive to God in 
our stead, and well-pleasing to the Father in our 
stead: which is at variance with the Scripture 
declaration, that we are all this in him; not pu- 
tatively, but really — "Accepted in the beloved/' 
"Alive in Christ." "Transformed by the re- 
newing of your mind." 

This union of the believer with Christ, with 
all its blessed consequences, pervading as it 
does the whole language of the Gospel, is com- 
prehensively set forth by St. Paul in Rom. vi. 
" As many of us as were baptized into Jesus 
Christ, were baptized into his death. Therefore 
are we buried with him." "Knowing this 
that our old man is crucified with him." 



the lord's supper. 77 

" Likewise reckon yourselves to be dead indeed 
unto sin, but alive unto God." And he argues 
the necessity of this, inasmuch as without being 
partakers of Christ in his death, we could not 
be freed from the dominion of sin. " Our old 
man was crucified with him, that the body of 
sin might be destroyed: for he that is dead is 
freed from sin." The believer, then, who 
neither has died, nor ever is to die in his own 
person for the expiation of his sins; who neither, 
has lived, nor ever will live so as to merit any 
thing at the hands of God; who has not, and to 
all eternity will not have wisdom or righteous- 
ness, or sanctification, or life, or knowledge, or 
strength, or understanding, in and by himself; 
has, by virtue of a mysterious union with the 
Son of God, both died to sin and risen again to 
righteousness; and deriving all by communica- 
tion from him, " the life which he now lives in 
the flesh, he lives by the faith of the Son of 
God." "lam crucified with Christ; neverthe- 
less I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." 
And this union is the unfolded mystery, the 
mysterious blessedness, exhibited to us in the 
sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Not the man- 
ner of it; that has not been, and perhaps could 
not be subjected to mortal apprehension: there 
probably are neither words nor ideas through 
which an impression of it could be conveyed; 
neither a capacity of understanding into which 
it could be received. I perceive but one 
8 



78 ON THE BENEFITS OF 

parallel, and that is a mystery deeper and 
more inscrutable that itself — the union of the 
manhood and the godhead in our Lord, so 
utterly and entirely beyond my conception. 
In both cases, the fact has been revealed, and 
must be received by faith, without understand- 
ing. Received by faith, but not as a metaphy- 
sical problem, a dry and cold and abstract 
statement of theoretical truth. Though Ave 
have taken our view of the Gospel mystery 
from this point, it is not so we can realize it, 
and enjoy it, and live upon it; it is not so it 
is exhibited in the sacramental elements: the 
wisdom, the mercy, the fitness, the eternal 
blessedness of the believer's union with the 
Saviour, is to be studied, verified, and enjoyed, 
as it is here exhibited, in the results, in its 
application to the soul of the sinner. 

Our communion purports to be received " In 
remembrance of his meritorious cross and pas- 
sion, whereby alone we obtain remission of our 
sins, and are made partakers of the kingdom of 
heaven." Union with Christ does at once pass 
us, as we have seen, from death in Adam with 
all its immediate and eternal consequences, to 
life in Christ with all its present light and 
everlasting glory. In other Scripture terms — 
" Out of darkness into marvellous light" — 
" When we were dead in sins, hath quickened 
us together with Christ" — "Born again, not 
of corruptible seed" — a change more especially 



79 

exhibited in the sacrament of baptism. For 
the communicant who with a true penitent 
heart and lively faith presents himself at the 
Lord's table, this is assumed to have been done 
— born anew of the Spirit unto repentance, and 
by faith received into communion with the Son, 
he is considered, and called upon to consider 
himself dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto 
righteousness through Christ: a child of God, 
an heir of Christ, and an inheritor of the king- 
dom of heaven, But who that in faith, or even 
in hope has taken this position, has not found 
that he wants something more? He is still to 
his own consciousness the same miserable sin- 
ner. Salvation, perfected as it is for him, is 
not yet perfected in him; sin lives, though it 
reigns no longer. Satan is his enemy, though 
not his king: pardoned though he is, and justi- 
fied though he stands from every charge, if left, 
he would return to folly; if allowed, he would 
slay himself again; if unsustained, the divine 
life within him will expire, and he will neither 
bring forth fruit meet for repentance, nor con- 
tinue to walk by faith in remembrance of his 
high calling. How blessed! at this point of our 
condition, is the truth of the believer's union 
with the Lord; how welcome the sacramental 
elements, in which are exhibited the very sup- 
port we need: exhibited under the figure of 
food: for the maintenance of life, and increase 
of strength, and growth in stature. "For then 



we spiritually eat the flesh of Christ, and drink 
his blood; then we dwell in Christ and Christ 
in us: we are one with Christ and Christ with 
us." One with Him in whom all fulness 
dwells: what fear that we shall want or be 
found wanting? with Him who having died 
unto sin once, liveth unto God — what fear that 
we shall be brought into bondage of the wicked 
one? Who being raised from the dead, dieth 
no more — what fear that we shall ever die 
again? One with him who has the Spirit with- 
out measure, how should we then come short 
of its sufficiency for all things? This blessed 
union was in the Apostle's mind when he ex- 
claimed, "For all things are yours, whether 
Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or 
life, or death, or things present, or things to 
come; all are yours, and you are Christ's, and 
Christ is God's." 

Such I understand to be the truth brought to 
remembrance in the Lord's Supper, and these 
the benefits exhibited therein. Our church 
affirms, that as well as signs of those benefits, 
"they are means whereby we receive the same, 
and a pledge to assure us thereof." (Cate- 
chism.) 

" Insomuch that to such as rightly, worthily, 
and with faith receive the same, the bread 
which we break is a partaking of the body of 
Christ, and likewise the cup of blessing is a par- 
taking of the blood of Christ." (Articles.) 



81 



CHAPTER V. 



TABLE. 

It is a fact — one indeed, of which man has 
made an evil use, but nevertheless, a fact, that 
God does very seldom, if he does ever, in this 
world, work without an agency — without the 
intervention of some apparent means for effect- 
ing that which He designs. " He maketh the 
winds his ministers and his messengers a flame 
of fire." Some body or some thing executes 
his most sure decrees. He took time, He used 
a process when he made the world; and man 
was formed out of the material dust. Even 
that sentence which has passed on all men, 
which has become inseparable from our being, 
and essential to mortality — even death never 
takes place without a second cause. In the 
natural world every thing is effected by an 
established agency, doing its work with the 
unconscious monotony of a machine, and yet 
achieving the most discriminating acts of justice 
or mercy. The rolling surge has no preference 
between the body it ingulfs, and the one it 
casts alive upon the shore — the east wind does 
not choose whose harvest it will blight or spare; 
S* 



82 ON REFUSING TO COME 

they are the undiscerning agents of a discerning 
God. There is scarcely an act of providence, 
however striking and impressive, in which a 
second cause is not perceptibly made use of. If 
otherwise, it constitutes that act miraculous: and 
even in these more immediate interpositions of 
the Deity, means, though not ordinary ones, are 
commonly employed: there came a strong wind 
to raise the waters of Jordan, and a destroying 
angel to slay the first-born of Egypt. Man in 
his wisdom gainsays this arrangement. Unsanc- 
tified knowledge on the one hand, perceiving 
that the thing is so — that deeper research can 
discover a cause for every thing, with effects so 
regularly following, determines that the world 
can do without a God, and finds an over-ruling 
providence superfluous. Pious ignorance, on 
the other hand, takes offence at the research of 
science — Why inquire after means at all? has 
not God done all things as he pleases, and must 
he work by yule as men do? We know not, I 
apprehend, which is the highest act of sove- 
reignty — to work with means or without them — 
it is a mere assumption that to look for second 
causes is to impeach the sovereign power of 
God. If we may judge of what it becomes the 
Almighty to do, by what He does, the presump- 
tion will be contrariwise: assuredly He works 
always for his own greatest glory; He does 
nothing upon earth without agency; and He has 
not told us that he does in heaven. In the work 



TO THE LORD'S TABLE. 83 

of grace the fact is still the same — God uses in- 
struments for a work exclusively his own. We 
speak with reverence when we say the Holy 
Spirit is the first great Agent — because, though 
it is Scripture language, inasmuch as God is con- 
tinually said to work by the Spirit, to give the 
Spirit, &c, we must never forget that the Holy 
Spirit himself is God, and therefore, cannot as- 
sume the character of a second cause. This first 
great agent of redeeming grace does sometimes 
work without the interposition of secondary 
means. He probably so acted upon the minds 
of them of old, in what we understand by inspi- 
ration — immediate and direct communication to 
the heart. He may so act when his holy influ- 
ence blows where it listeth, and we hear the 
sound thereof, but cannot tell whence it cometh 
or whither it goeth. But we know that this is 
not generally the case: the reading of the Scrip- 
ture, or some other book — the preaching of the 
Gospel — the arguments and influence of pious 
friends, some striking act of Providence, religious 
ordinances, sickness, suffering or misfortune, 
may almost always be remarked as the means 
made use of to bring us to the knowledge of sal- 
vation, to mature our faith, and make us meet 
for heaven; though all that is effectual in these 
things, is from first to last, the work of God, by 
the agency of the Holy Spirit. 

How vain, then, is man, that he should neglect 
or despise even the least probable means of spi- 



84 ON REFUSING TO COME 

ritual benefit. The most casual providence, the 
most inefficient preacher, the most imperfect ser- 
vice, provided the truth of God be exhibited in 
them, may be made the instrument of bringing 
divine life into the soul, or cherishing it there. 
We know not what healthful influences we throw 
away, when from some motive of earthly profit 
or convenience, we remove ourselves from the 
society of God's people, from the pure preaching 
of the Gospel, the use of ordinances, and oppor- 
tunities of public worship. 

In the communion of the body and blood of 
Christ we have a means of grace that stands on 
the highest ground. It is a divine appointment 
— a positive command; and yet, who has not 
passed the doors of a church at the moment 
when the congregation are pouring out, hun- 
dreds after hundreds, on the crowded pavement? 
The old, the sick — they do not look as if they 
would live to come again: the young, the gay — 
a long and perilous journey is before them: the 
rich — how hardly shall a rich man enter the 
kingdom of heaven: the poor — at least the poor 
have need of consolation! But they are all 
gone: it is too common a sight to wonder at: 
the service is ended. No, indeed it is not. The 
doors have been closed upon a few score sup- 
pliants, whose voices echo through the vacant 
space — some solitary ones here and there in the 
lately crowded pews, shivering in the sudden 
depopulation. What are they about? Nothing 



TO THE LORD'S TABLE. 85 

extraordinary — it happens every month — they 
are staying for* the Sacrament! Eternal Being, 
is thine eye intent upon this place, and dost thou 
see nothing extraordinary in the scene? Are 
these the only ones of all that crowd, for whom 
thy blood was shed, thy body broken, thy feast 
provided, and thy welcome given? These all 
the sinners in danger of forgetting thee, or suf- 
ferers that stand in need of comfort, or dying 
ones exposed to condemnation! It is not yet 
the time when thou wilt command that they 
shut to the door, and exclude for ever those that 
are not ready: it is not thy doing that these 
hundreds, these christian hundreds turn their 
backs upon thy table! Suppose for a moment 
we could come with authority to the church- 
door — human authority — all would listen then 
— and require that no one should pass out till 
they had inscribed upon a tablet their reason for 
not staying to receive the holy communion at this 
appointed time. How would it read? Of the 
greater number, the reply would be, "We have 
no* particular reason — we never thought of stay- 
ing — we never stay the Sacrament." Without 
a reason, and without a thought, they neglect a 
divine command: refuse to partake of an ordi- 
nance ordained by Christ himself,and pronounced 
by their own church necessary to salvation. We 
might well inquire why they call themselves 
Christians, and come to worship in this place? 
They of old who would not eat of the Paschal 



86 ON REFUSING TO COME 

Lamb at the appointed times, were to be cut off 
from the congregation of the people. Another 
number, a considerable number would put it 
thus — "We stay three times a-year — we never 
neglect to stay at Christmas and other particular 
seasons." This is indeed better, but so small an 
appetite is scarcely a sign of health: we are not 
thought to thrive when our food produces satiety 
— it is not the hungry guest, nor yet the loving 
one that seldomest returns to eat and drink with 
us. We might ask of these, why at those par- 
ticular seasons they accept the benefits they now 
refuse. "We are engaged— we are in haste this 
morning." But surely they forget: this is no 
working-day, they will break other laws pre- 
sently to be relieved of the wearisome hours 
that remain. "We are not prepared, we are not 
fit to stay." Poor sinners! Jesus has tenderest 
pity for the tears that should have blotted that 
sentence while you wrote it — a Saviour's eye 
has watched your trembling hand while you 
inscribed that sentence against yourself — He has 
thought upon the anguish of his soul when he 
too felt the weight of unforgiven sin — when 
Satan and the powers of darkness had their hour 
with him, as they have now with you. It is 
most likely true! — you are not prepared, you 
are not fit to stay! But do you indeed know it? 
Do you feel that you are not his — that you have 
no faith to feed upon his flesh, or penitence to 
seek remission from his blood — that you do not 



TO THE LORD'S TABLE. 87 

know if he has died for you, or if there is any 
virtue in his death to save — that you have not 
examined yourselves whether you repent you 
of your former sins, stedfastly purposing to lead 
a new life? — nay, it was not necessary to exa- 
mine — a thought is sufficient; you know you do 
not. It is most likely so — and you must go 
away: we cannot tell you otherwise — for this 
time you must go away: And may the Spirit 
write upon your heart the sentence you have 
given. Jesus is long-suffering and of great 
goodness — he willeth not the death of a sinner, 
but rather that he should turn to him and live: 
this may not, through his mercy, be the last time 
you will be invited to his table: that door which 
has been closed behind you, may not be the one 
which the unready will knock at eternally in 
vain. But lest you abide contented with the 
condition in which you know yourselves to be, 
bear with a word of truth concerning it. It is 
here, under your own hand, that you are unfit 
for heaven — unprepared to die — unrepentant, 
unbelieving, unforgiven — and of course con- 
demned to everlasting death. There is a reme- 
dy, but you refuse it — an invitation, but you 
will not accept it — a command, but you will not 
obey it. "Look unto me and be ye saved." 
"All things are ready — come unto the marriage: 
but they made light of it, and went their ways; 
one to his farm, another to his merchandise." 
The crowd is dispersed, the street is silent, 



88 ON REFUSING TO COME 

they have gone their ways. We have not kept 
the register, but the Great Searcher of hearts 
has; and such is the fact, as it lies exposed be- 
fore him, with respect to the greater number of 
the dispersing congregation. If the eyes of those 
indifferent ones could be opened, not a soul but 
would shrink with terror from the sight which 
they fear not to exhibit before the face of Him 
who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. 
" But the God of this world hath blinded the 
minds of them that believe not, lest the light of 
the glorious Gospel of Christ, who is the image 
of God, should shine unto them." * Their eyes 
are closed that they cannot see, and their ears 
are heavy that they cannot hear;" but whether 
they will hear, or whether they will forbear, 
whoever they be that wilfully refuse to come to 
the Lord's Supper, this is the truth of their con- 
dition. They are dying creatures: some will die 
to-night and more to-morrow — many before 
another sacrament, and all within four-score 
years. They are sinful creatures, " who have 
done what they ought not to have done, and 
left undone what they ought to have done," till 
there is no health in them by reason of their 
sins; and of this sickness they may die eternal- 
ly — consigned to sure and everlasting woe. This 
is not a condition that may befal them some 
time; it is what they are now: now that they 
walk so confidently and carelessly away: dead 
in one sense, and dying in another — dead souls 



TO THE LORD'S TABLE. 89 

and dying bodies, murdered both by sin: let 
them alone, and they are dead for ever! "If 
our Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are 
lost." Sinners think of condemnation as some- 
thing that is to be; and since to mortal vision 
whatever is future is uncertain, they feed upon 
this uncertainty and call it hope. Uncertain! 
How then say the Scriptures — "Death passed 
upon all men, for that all have sinned." "By 
one, judgment came upon all men unto condem- 
nation." " In Adam all died." " He that be- 
lieveth not is condemned already, because he 
hath not believed in the name of the only-begot- 
ten Son of God." Man, as a sinner, is not in 
the condition of an untried criminal, waiting, 
between hope and fear, the time of trial, uncer- 
tain to be convicted or acquitted; that vague fal- 
lacious dream of many a lost one ! Such a cri- 
minal may hope in spite of conscious guilt; 
because his guilt may not appear; the evidence 
may be insufficient, the judge may lean to cle- 
mency, or the legal penalty may not attach. But 
the sinner's guilt waits for no evidence, requires 
no trial; every thought of his heart, every cri- 
minal movement of his soul has lain open from 
all eternity to the Almighty judge; he will be 
brought up for judgment, not for trial: nay, the 
sentence is already past; " the soul that sinneth, 
it shall die;" it is the execution only waits! 
Woe to us, if even that be not past too: if the 
substitute has not already died— if our sentence 
9 



90 ON REFUSING TO COME 

has not been executed on another — if we were 
not in Christ, when he was brought up from 
prison and from judgment, nailed in him on the 
cross, laid with him in the grave; woe to us, un- 
less judgment and justice have done with us, 
and "there remaineth no condemnation to them 
that are in Christ Jesus." The uncertainty* is 
all our own, and ours will be the discovery at 
the day of judgment. " Whosoever was not 
found written in the book of life, was cast into 
the lake of fire:" — The Lamb's book of life — 
found written — not written then; — that is no 
day of pardon or acquittal: we must be pardon- 
ed now, justified now, united now to Him, who 
has made an end of sin, and put the sinner be- 
yond the reach of judgment. 

" Well, we hope we are, or that at least we 
shall be before we die; it does not depend upon 
going to the Sacrament." If a traveller has 
taken a contrary road, he may hope, and we 
may hope, that turning back he will attain his 
end: but to hope that he will reach it by going 
on, is the trust of folly; it is impossible! Sal- 
vation does not indeed depend on going to the 
Sacrament — Judas went there, and Satan en- 
tered into him — but it does depend on our being 
brought into that state of mind, in which 
nothing but necessity could keep us from it. 
We never argue that our children's love does 
not depend upon their obedience, their com- 
pliance with our wishes, and enjoyment of our 



TO THE LORD'S TABLE. 91 

presence; or say that our health does not 
depend upon our appetite, or strength, or ease; 
that the sanity of our mind does not depend on 
the rationality of our actions and conclusions; 
because in natural things we make no confusion 
between the evidence, and the cause of our 
condition. Coming to this table is not the cause 
of our faith and repentance, any more than 
faith and repentance are themselves the cause 
of our salvation: but as faith and repentance 
are necessary to salvation, the sacraments are 
necessary as evidences of these, and by infer- 
ence, as our chnrch declares them, necessary to 
salvation: as acts of obedience to the divine 
command, they are indispensably necessary to 
our abiding in his love. " If any man love me, 
he will keep my commandments." " This do 
in remembrance of me." 

All who wilfully and without a sufficient 
reason refuse to come to the Lord's table, do in 
the very act of departing from the church in 
which it is celebrated, make a public declara- 
tion of one of these things; — either that they do 
not value the benefits to be received thereby, 
or that they are not entitled to partake of them. 
Comparing either position with the language of 
Scripture, most fearful is the judgment we give 
against ourselves. Suppose that we do not 
value these benefits, that is, we do not believe 
them to be of any value. It is an awful pre- 
dicament, when we consider what it is we dis- 



92 ON REFUSING TO COME 

believe, and the authority we set at nought in 
doing so. " This is my body which was bro- 
ken for you." " This is my blood of the New 
Testament, which was shed for many, for the 
remission of sins." "As often as ye eat this 
bread, and drink this cup, ye do show forth the 
Lord's death till he come." "The body and 
blood of Christ, which are verily and indeed 
taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's 
Supper." " The strengthening and refreshing 
of our souls by the body and blood of Christ, as 
our bodies are by the bread and wine." " The 
benefit is great, if with a truly penitent heart 
and lively faith, we receive that holy Sacra- 
ment; for then we spiritually eat the flesh of 
Christ, and drink his blood, then we dwell in 
Christ, and Christ in us; we are one with 
Christ, and Christ with us." 

The testimony of God and of the church are 
one: if we receive neither, why have vve come 
to church at all? " Into whose name then were 
ye baptized?" Why have we offered so many 
prayers in Jesus' name, pleaded so many times 
this blood which we do not value, this body 
broken, which we do not care for; and given 
so many thanks for benefits in which we do not 
believe? What sudden fear has seized us, of 
becoming hypocrites if we stay any longer in 
the church this morning? We have been 
breathing hypocrisy ever since we entered it. 
You deny this: you are shocked at the suppo- 



TO THE LORD'S TABLE. 93 

sition that you do not believe in the benefits of 
Christ's death and passion; it is of course that 
we believe it; so much of course, that we do 
not require the sacramental pledges to assure us 
thereof. Are you so sure of God's mercy, that 
you need not seek it in the way of his appoint- 
ing: so sure of his love, that you need not do 
the things that he has said? so sure of your 
food, you need not eat it; of your medicine, 
you need not take it? so penitent you need no 
pardon; so faithful you need no grace; so grate- 
ful you need make no acknowledgements? 
" God knows our hearts." Yes, he does know; 
and whether you will come, or whether you 
will not come, He has no discoveries to make — 
He knows it all. But he who has nothing to 
discover, has determined that nothing shall be 
taken for granted: he will have no things of 
course; he will have outward manifestation of 
every inward feeling. "With the heart man 
believeth unto righteousness, and with the 
mouth confession is made unto salvation." 
" Unless ye eat my flesh, and drink my blood, 
ye have no part in me." God accepts no peni- 
tence without confession, no love without obe- 
dience, no grace without prayer, no faith without 
profession. And what he does not accept, He 
has not promised. He has not promised par- 
don, hope, or safety, apart from the means 
appointed to convey them, to which end he 
has especially ordained these holy mysteries. 



94 ON REFUSING TO COME 

When we need not the blessings, we may dis- 
pense with the instruments. When faith is 
swallowed up in sight, and hope in joy, and 
death in victory; then the watercourses will be 
cut off, and the waters called back to the foun- 
tain; and these holy sacraments will cease for us: 
n I saw no temple therein, for the Lord God 
Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it." 
Rev. xxi. 22. 

But, until the fulness of that time be come, to 
all who think they have no need of these, who 
refuse to 'come to the stream, that they may 
drink; to the tables, that they may be fed; 
who will not wash in Jordan, that they may be 
clean; who take all for granted — Christians of 
course — we may use the Apostle's words, " Be- 
cause thou sayest I am rich, and increased with 
goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest 
not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and 
poor, and blind, and naked; I counsel thee to 
buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou may- 
est be rich, and white raiment that thou mayest 
be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness 
may not appear; and anoint thine eyes with 
eye-salve that thou mayest see." 

On the single alternative we have said some- 
thing, but not enough; suppose you are not 
entitled to the benefits exhibited and received 
in the Lord's Supper, can you believe it and 
go in peace? If it is so, you have no part in 
Christ; no participation in his blood; no 



TO THE LORD'S TABLE. 95 

benefit of his death; no remission of sin; no 
sanctifying spirit; no help in life, no hope in 
death, no promise for eternity: for these are 
the benefits distributed to the faithful in the 
Lord's Supper, to which you are not entitled. 
And as there is no other name given under hea- 
ven whereby we may be saved, but the name of 
Jesus Christ; in whose body and blood you can- 
not be partakers, there is but one sequence — you 
are lost for ever! It is an awful sentence: but 
it is yours, not ours; and the everlasting seal is 
not yet affixed to it. The Saviour still repeats 
the loving words, " Come unto me, all that tra- 
vail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh 
you." The scripture still contains this precious 
truth, " God so loved the world that he gave his 
only-begotten Son, to the end, that all that be- 
lieve in him should not perish, but have ever- 
lasting life." " This is a true saying and wor- 
thy of all men to be received, that Christ Jesus 
came into the world to save sinners." The 
church repeats her slighted invitation, " Ye that 
do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins, 
and are in love and charity with your neighbor, 
and intend to lead a new life, following the com- 
mandments of God, and walking henceforth in 
his holy ways; draw near with faith, and take 
this holy sacrament to your comfort." There is 
yet time. " To-day," while there remaineth a 
day, " if ye will hear his voice, harden not 
your hearts." To-day, while it is called to- 



96 ON REFUSING TO COME, &C. 

day, lest any of you be hardened through the 
deceitfulness of sin." There is a day of grace, 
but no to-morrow. "For behold the night 
cometh in which no man can work." " There 
remaineth no more sacrifice for sin, but a certain 
fearful looking-for of judgment." 



97 



CHAPTER VI. 

OP THOSE THAT ARE AFRAID TO COME. 

We have supposed a case — we have seen in 
idea the recusant crowd disperse; and if the 
master of the feast has said on the one hand, 
" They that were bidden were not worthy," 
has he not cause to say on the other, "Were 
there not ten cleansed? where then are the 
nine? There is not found to give glory to God, 
save this stranger." Jesus has watched the re- 
ceding steps of some to whom nothing we have 
said is applicable; who do indeed write the 
same hard sentence against themselves; " they 
are not fit, they are not ready now," and go 
away in sorrow, not in scorn; intending to 
return some better day. And we can fancy that 
we hear the benignant voice again, as it spake 
once to the disciples in the wilderness: " They 
need not go away, give ye them to eat." The 
divine master's feasts are all alike: "They have 
fasted all the day and eaten nothing: if I should 
send them away fasting, they will faint by the 
way." Hunger was the preparation for that 
miraculous feast. " Fetch hither the poor, and 
the maimed, and the halt, and the blind." Others 
had the invitation, but it was the hungry and 



98 OF THOSE THAT ARE 

necessitous that had the feast. "Blessed are 
they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, 
for they shall be filled." The living water, the 
life-giving bread, the manna that came down 
from heaven, the wine and milk without money, 
and without price, all his provisions are bestow- 
ed alike. " He filleth the hungry with good 
things, and the rich he sends empty away." 

Our title to partake of the Sacrament is the 
same as our title to partake of Christ; we do not 
purchase the tokens, while we take the grace for 
nought; merit the shadows, and have the sub- 
stance free. If the fears of the timid are to be 
removed, I think they must be met upon this 
ground: for whatever be the exclusive charac- 
ter of the ceremony, as limited to the family of 
God, the seal of adoption is an invisible one; 
until it be realised, sometimes slowly, often im- 
perfectly, and it may be never fully, in the signs 
of divine life within the soul. Admitting that 
the benefits to be derived from the Holy Com- 
munion are confined to those who are alive in 
Christ, and united to him by a living faith, and 
cannot in anywise be partaken of by those who 
are yet dead in trespasses and sins, which I 
most fully do: I for myself must say, that I can- 
not agree with those who require that the com- 
municant should certainly know that he is born 
again of the Spirit, and made one with Christ, 
before he presents himself to eat and drink at 
the table of the faithful. It is one thing to be 






AFRAID TO COME. 99 

in a state of grace, and another to realise confi- 
dently the fact that we are so. I doubt if the 
apostles themselves, at the time they received 
their first commnnion, could have met the 
inquiry so put; though to the simple question, 
" Lovest thou me?" they could all have answer- 
ed, " Yea, Lord." Many are renewed in the 
Spirit, and justly hope they are, and with more 
or less confidence, do even believe they are — 
who would yet hesitate to approach the altar, 
and declare that they know themselves to be so. 
The suggestions of Satan, and the infirmities of 
the flesh, produce uncertainties, where there need 
be none; while there is many a living member 
of the body of Christ, in whom the signs of life 
are for a season so indefinite, and overborne by 
earthliness, it is only God can know if they be 
genuine: the doubting disciple may be afraid, 
and may have some reason to be afraid that sin 
has still dominion over him: but so far from for- 
bidding such a one, awakened to a sense of his 
condition, and seeking deliverance by the blood 
of Christ, I should invite and urge him to com- 
municate, as a means through which more 
grace might prayerfully and hopefully be ex- 
pected. 

Satan is very subtle, and there is a principle 
within us more subtle even than he; the princi- 
ple of self-righteousness, so tenacious, it will 
catch at the shadow of a straw to maintain 
itself. Christ is our title to salvation, but where 



100 OF THOSE THAT ARE 

is our title to Christ? Here are the emblems of 
his blood shed, and body broken, but how do 
we know if they are designed for us? The 
secret decrees of the eternal godhead have not 
been found too distant a place to hide away the 
sinner's title to his Saviour, lest haply he should 
find it, and take possession. How do we know 
if we were in Christ before the foundation of the 
world, chosen of God and precious, foreknown 
and predestinate to life and union with him; — 
without which we cannot eat his flesh, or drink 
his blood, or appropriate the blessings of these 
holy mysteries? I believe that Jehovah has, 
because he says he has, his hidden ones, his 
secret covenant, his eternal purpose, his fixed 
immutable decrees. But, like the plan itself of 
their salvation, the election of grace is the secret 
of omnipotence, into which we are not called 
upon to look, nor can look, except as it is mani- 
fested in its effects. We are not called upon to 
know, we cannot know, that we were in Christ 
when he died, or in the covenant when he under- 
took to die, otherwise than by discerning that 
we are in him now. " Say not in thine heart, 
Who shall ascend into heaven? — that is to bring 
Christ down from above; or Who shall descend 
into the deep? — that is to bring Christ again 
from the dead. But what saith it? The word 
is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy 
heart: that is the word of faith which we 
preach." Whatever may have been dqne, or 



AFRAID TO COME. 101 

written, or determined in the eternal councils of 
Jehovah, all that we are cognizant of is trans- 
acted here: salvation was wrought out on earth, 
within the reach of mortal sense and knowledge: 
and it is on earth that our title to it must be 
made out, our interest in it made sure, not by 
discovery of our names written in those uno- 
pened books of heaven, but in the traces of the 
Spirit working in our hearts, in the word that 
our mouths can utter, and the faith that our 
hearts can feel; the word of promise that tells 
us, such and such are the heirs of salvation; in 
the answer of faith that testifies we are such and 
such, and takes the promise home. The doc- 
trine of an elect and foreordained people, in con- 
nection with the responsibility of man, is a mys- 
tery as unsearchable to human reason, as that of 
the atonement, God manifest in the flesh: but 
like that also, it appears to me in its application 
to the soul, the simplest thing possible: never 
more simply exhibited, than in the teaching of 
Him, to whom those secret decrees were no 
secret, but who used them only as he left them 
for our use. When Jesus had his pre-elected 
twelve to bring out from that unbelieving nation, 
his first address to them was, " Follow me;" the 
same it is to all of us, as if they were to do it of 
their own free-will. " If any man will be my 
disciple, let him forsake all that he hath, and 
follow me, and he shall have treasure in heaven;" 
as if it were submitted to their preference. " If 
10 



102 OF THOSE THAT ARE 

any man will keep my commandments, the Fa- 
ther will love him ;" as if divine love were the 
reward of obedience. "Thy faith hath saved 
thee;" as if faith were the originating cause of 
salvation. " Ask, and ye shall have, seek and 
ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto 
you;" as if the first movement was to be their 
own, something which they could do if they 
would, and were responsible if they would not. 
Would he have satisfied them, think ye, if they 
had wanted first to be assured of their interest 
in him who bade them follow; if Peter had re- 
fused to leave his nets, and Matthew his receipt 
of custom, till they could make out their title in 
the eternal covenant: if they had insisted on 
realising the personal application, the individual 
benefit of that bread before they ate it, that wine 
before they drank it: — " What is that to thee?" 
Jesus addressed all upon their responsibility: 
with motives and inducements that should act 
upon their determination: but Jesus did not leave 
them without the blessed assurance of their title 
to salvation; nor in any mistake as to the means 
by which it had become theirs: for he tells them 
they were the Father's, before they became his, 
that he had chosen them, they had not chosen 
him; and blessed were they whose names were 
written in heaven. This is irreconcileable. It 
is so: and be it so. But here are the precious 
emblems of the body and blood of Christ; they 
are offered, not to a person, but to a character, 



AFRAID TO COME. 103 

invited not by name, but by description. What 
wait ye for — "Come to the supper." 

We wait to be assured that we answer the 
description by which we are invited. And so 
indeed we must, " Ye that mind to come to the 
holy communion of the body and blood of our 
Saviour Christ," must " consider how St. Paul 
exhorteth all men to try and examine them- 
selves before they presume to eat of that bread 
and drink of that cup." There is an unpre- 
paredness that with a bold and confident step 
comes often to the table, mindless enough of 
the searching eye that marks the ill-dressed 
guest, and only spares to cast him out, because 
there is yet a time to discover his own naked- 
ness. Pride, impenitence, and unbelief are 
spots in the feast of charity that Jesus sees; 
guilty now, as they were heretofore, of his most 
precious blood; now of despising, as before of 
shedding it. Jesus sees many now, as hereto- 
fore he saw but one, who having eaten of his 
bread, will lift up his heel against him; will 
presently be found among his enemies; profan- 
ing his Sabbaths, disputing his word, denying 
him for gain, or forsaking him for pleasure. 
But these are not they whom fear withholds, or 
a sense of unworthiness keeps back. 

At this thy table, blessed Lord, thou hast 
indeed fulfilled thine own injunctions — thou 
has not bidden the rich that can give to thee 
again; thou hast called the poor, who can make 



104 OF THOSE THAT ARE 

thee no recompense, until thy redeemed shall be 
themselves thy recompense — the joy that is set 
before thee. And thy bread and wine are like 
thy own precious blood; not intended for the 
righteous, nor for the just made perfect; they 
are for sinners — for repenting sinners as such, 
who are not worthy so much as to gather up 
the crumbs under thy table; whose sins are 
grievous; whose burden is intolerable. Are 
any such afraid to come? Then I can only say, 
I find no other name or title, or description, 
under which they are invited. I cannot find it 
written, Come, ye washed, ye cleansed, ye per- 
fect ones; come hither, ye strong, ye sanctified, 
ye assured. It is " Come unto me, all ye that 
are weary and heavy-laden, and I will refresh 
you." " Let him that is athirst come, and 
whosoever will, let him take the water of life 
freely." Willingness and need. — " The lost," 
it was the name of them that Jesus came to 
save: "Ready to perish" — it is the only readi- 
ness that Jesus speaks of. Our misery was the 
Saviour's inducement when he died, and our 
salvation his only desired reward. Sense of 
the one, and consent to the other, a truly peni- 
tent heart and living faith, are all the title now 
that he acknowledges. When the spirit is 
willing, but the flesh is weak; when the spirit 
is not willing, but is longing to be made so; 
when the heart is broken and can find no peace; 
nay, when the heart is stout, but desires to be 



AFRAID TO COME. 105 

broken, we would repeat our words — "Come 
ye to the supper/' 

But Satan has more to say — and he can quote 
Scripture too. There was one called and came, 
but he had not on a w T edding garment. To 
keep the awakened soul from Christ as well as 
from his table, some notion of preparation is 
infused: — we must be better first, or more sure 
at least of our sincerity. We must dress our- 
selves before we go; we cannot go as we are 
into the kingly presence. Oh! it was no kingly 
presence-chamber when on that night in which 
He was betrayed, the man of sorrows sat among 
his few, and distributed the precious emblems 
without a word of sovereignty but this, " Take, 
eat." It was then that he girded himself to 
wash their feet; it was then he looked for some 
to take pity and there was none, and for com- 
forters and found none. If there be a moment 
above every other in which perfect love should 
cast out fear, it would seem to be in approach- 
ing the sacramental table, where every terror 
of the Godhead is veiled under images of suf- 
fering, lowliness and grief. When I have 
looked upon the table spread, and tried to con- 
centrate my thoughts upon the scene of that 
first supper, to realise the words as Jesus spake 
them, " Take, eat, this is my body which was 
broken for you/' as they thrilled upon my soul, 
I have thought that pride and unbelief were the 
10* 



106 OF THOSE THAT ARE 

only unfitness for such a presence; there could 
not be a sinner willing and not welcome. 

" Go into the highways and hedges, and as 
many as ye find, bid them to the feast. Men 
are not found on the highways in wedding 
dresses; the garment was provided for them at 
the feast; but he who was found without one 
had neglected to put it on: a beautiful illustra- 
tion of the kingdom of God, where all that is 
required of us is provided for us. " Bring the 
best robe and put it on him." "Put ye on the 
Lord Jesus Christ." "That ye put on the new 
man, which after God is created in righteousness 
and true holiness." St. Paul's reproof to the 
Corinthians, is not that they came to the feast 
when they should have remained away; but 
that coming they had not received it in a pro- 
per manner, in a right state of mind, and with 
a due appreciation of its design: — "not discern- 
ing the Lord's body." It is not said, " Because 
many are weak and sickly among you, and 
many sleep, therefore ye are unfit partakers of 
this sacrament," as if weakness, and sickness, 
and torpor, were reasons for abstaining from 
the spiritual sustenance appointed for their 
relief. These unhealthy symptoms are said 
to be the consequences, not the cause, of the 
unworthy receiving of the sacred elements. 
When they ate the bread and drank the wine, 
their souls fed not upon Christ, they did not 
spiritually eat his flesh and drink his blood; 



AFRAID TO COME. 107 

they did not discern, or realise, or perhaps 
believe, the benefits to be received therein; they 
profaned the rite by their levity, and denied it 
by their unbelief, and were guilty of despising 
both it and him. "For this cause many are 
weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.'' 
Because here is food and ye do not eat it: be- 
cause here is medicine and ye do not take it; 
because here are words of peace and love that 
might waken the slumbers of the very dead, 
and ye do not hear them; — what wonder if ye 
both faint and sleep to death, and make your- 
selves guilty of your own destruction. But 
where in all the Scripture is it written, " Ye are 
too sick for my medicine; too faint for my food; 
too weary and jaded for my voice to strengthen 
you?" Certainly not in this passage, in which 
the penitent sinner thinks he finds his prohibi- 
tion, and the timid Christian reads the warning 
that keeps him at a distance. " Let a man 
examine himself," and so let him turn his back 
upon my table; let him go sick, and weak, and 
torpid to his home, and come again when he is 
better ! I have read this in other books; I 
almost think I have heard it from the pulpit, 
but I never could find it in the word of God. 
Neither do I think the formulary of our church 
places any such difficulty in the way of the 
awakened but unestablished Christian; repent- 
ance for sins past, and faith in the atoning 
sacrifice of Christ, and purpose to lead a holy 



108 OP THOSE THAT ARE 

and religious life, are expressed without refer- 
ence to our attainment in them — whether it be 
the grain of mustard seed, or the fulness of the 
stature of Jesus Christ, " We are not worthy 
to gather up the crumbs under thy table. " 
" Trusting in thy manifold and great mercies." 
Now the very fear of the timid Christian im- 
plies a sense of un worthiness and conscious sin; 
and his desire to come implies at least some 
measure of belief in the efficacy of the blood of 
Jesus, in which he seeks an interest, and in the 
influences of the Spirit, of which he uses the 
means. 

The very coming in this mind is an act of 
obedience, and such a one as was never reject- 
ed by Jesus upon earth. " Lord, if thou wilt, 
thou canst make me whole," was no unaccepted 
prayer. "Grant us, gracious Lord, so to eat the 
flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink 
his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made 
clean by his body, and our souls washed in his 
most precious blood, and that we may evermore 
dwell in him, and he in us." We confess our 
misery and need: we profess our belief in the 
power of the atoning, purifying blood; but all 
that might present a difficulty to the weak be- 
liever in respect of his own attainments, is put 
in the form of supplication. In no part of the 
service are we called upon to say that we have 
walked in all the commandments of the Lord, 
or to promise that we will. Not one trembling 



AFRAID TO COME. 109 

sinner, not one humble self-condemning saint, 
would venture to draw near on such a bidding: 
I could almost say, not one would be found at 
the altar who had a right to come there; be- 
cause the more sanctified the soul becomes, the 
more does it perceive of its own defectibility; 
and as the first step of faith is shame and self- 
abhorrence, so every subsequent step is shame 
and self-abhorrence still. Alas! the saint who 
knows himself, best knows he has no more to 
promise than he has to give. He comes not to 
give an undertaking for himself — " Have pa- 
tience with me and I will pay thee all;" forgive 
the past, and I will serve and please thee for the 
time to come. He comes to say, " Grant that 
we may hereafter serve and please thee in new- 
ness of life, to the honor and glory of thy name." 
The stedfast purpose, the honest desire, and the 
believing prayer, are indispensable characters of 
a living faith: but to wait till they are to our 
own consciousness fulfilled, is to refuse the feast 
till we can bring the provision with us. I have 
not noticed the condition added by the church, 
to be in love and charity with all men; because 
I think no awakened soul can be long debarred 
the communion on account of it; the Scripture 
direction is plain, that if a man recollect that 
his brother hath aught against him, he is not to 
withdraw his gift and stay away, but to be im- 
mediately reconciled — to put away the resent- 
ment or the provocation, whichever be on his 



110 OF THOSE THAT ARE 

side, and come again. " Let not the sun go 
down upon thy wrath." 

The new-born spirit thus faltering at the 
threshold of the temple, does not know what 
he will know as he proceeds — that the moun- 
tain which now seems to bar his approach to 
God will continually present itself at every pe- 
riod of the life of faith: and he must do to the 
last, what he might do at the first, say to it — 
u Be thou removed and cast into the sea" — for 
this power was not promised to the strength and 
growth of faith, but to its smallest possible ex- 
istence. That mountain mass of sin, which the 
dawn of spiritual light so mistily discloses, will 
not diminish as the day-light grows — clearer, 
and blacker and more distinguishable each dark 
feature lies, and the advancing saint could only 
think that he grows worse, should he stand still 
to gaze upon himself, instead of looking to 
Jesus, the author and finisher of his faith. Let 
the willing, but fearing communicant examine 
himself— not upon his measure of faith or pro- 
gress in holiness — he will come to no assurance 
thus: let him examine himself what it is that 
keeps his soul from Christ and from the bless- 
ings of this holy table: for I must ever treat the 
two as one: he who knows that he has come 
to Christ, cannot have a doubt that he is wel- 
come here. The hesitation very probably ori- 
ginates in believing a part instead of the whole 
of the Gospel promise. We believe sometimes 



AFRAID TO COME. Ill 

that Christ has opened the gates of heaven for 
us, end left us to find the way to it as we can; 
has purchased for us the opportunity of salva- 
tion, and left it to ourselves to make effectual use 
of it; whence our uneasiness lest we mistake 
the way: Or having found, as we believe, the 
entrance gate, uncertain of strength and grace 
to persevere, we enter trembling and go on in 
fear. Or it may be that we accept from Christ 
the pardon of our sins, but look to ourselves for 
power to overcome them; justified in him, but 
sanctified in ourselves: like kingly grants of 
earth, to conquer and maintain the kingdom 
conferred upon us freely. Such thoughts as 
these lurk often in an unexamined faith, little 
suspicious of its own unsoundness, while mourn- 
fully desponding at its want of strength. If the 
willing candidate finds any thing of this sort in 
his mind, let him come and bring it with him to 
the altar — and see if it will stand before these 
pledges of the Saviour's love — if it is possible 
such a love has done but half its work. Gaze 
on the emblems of his body and blood, and hear 
his own words repeated, and think if it is pos- 
sible that coming to him you should be re- 
fused — that trusting him you should perish. 
Contemplate that blood, and see if there can be 
anything for you to add to its sufficiency — con- 
sider that body, and see if anything can be 
wanting to finish the work he has begun: Has 
it been shed for an experiment — broken for a 



112 OF THOSE THAT ARE AFRAID TO COME. 

maybe? "Draw near in faith, and take this 
holy Sacrament to your comfort." " They that 
were bidden shall not taste of my supper." 
Why? because they presumed upon an invita- 
tion not intended for them? No — but because 
when I had bidden them they were not wil- 
ling. He that is not chosen is cast out; be- 
cause he comes unbidden? No — but because 
when he comes he does not put on the robe of 
righteousness prepared for him, and wash him- 
self in the fountain opened for sin and for un- 
cleanness: he prefers his own tattered and pol- 
lnted raiment, his cherished sins or virtuous 
pretensions, to the imputation of Christ's right- 
eousness, and the imparted graces of the Holy 
Spirit. 



113 



CHAPTER VII. 

OF THOSE THAT COME UNWORTHILY. 

" Many are called — but few are chosen." It 
is the will of God, for the vindication doubtless 
of his own truth and honor, that the doctrine 
the most offensive to the natural heart, and the 
most proudly resisted by the world, is that which 
it is most continually destined both to witness 
and to verify: the worshippers of Christ are the 
few and not the many. Wherever the cross is 
exhibited, it is the few and not the many, that 
with a broken and a contrite heart bow down 
before it; wherever, and however the Gospel 
invitation is proclaimed, it is the few and not 
the many that with a true and living faith accept 
the promises and enter into rest. "For strait is 
the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth 
unto life, and few there be that find it." Few 
was the church of God when it floated over the 
waters of a drowning world; fewest of any peo- 
ple when he fetched it out of Egypt to be a 
separated nation to himself — and fewer still 
when all but three fell down before the golden 
image Nebuchadnezzar the king set up. Few 
were they when the Messiah came unto his 
own, and his own received him not: when Jesus 
11 



114 OF THOSE THAT 

with all his miracles, his power, his wisdom and 
his goodness, could gain but some hundreds to 
his side, and administered his first sacrament to 
only twelve. And since the Holy Ghost the 
Comforter has come, with all the out-pouring of 
his gracious Spirit, the spreading of his word 
and increase of his grace — what are we to say? 
Churches are opened, and the many of our po- 
pulation stay at home — the Holy Sacrament is 
administered, and the many of our Christian 
congregations go away. 

And yet — even yet — " The kingdom of hea- 
ven is like unto a net that was cast into the sea 
and gathered of every kind." Few, as from 
the multitudinous ocean of this sinful world, the 
Gospel net draws in — small as the Christian 
Church is amid the shoals of scepticism and 
idolatry — the awful fact is so — it is God's abid- 
ing pleasure that it should be so — they are not 
all Israel that are of Israel — the bad fish are in 
the net-— the tares are in the field — the goats are 
in the fold — there is a Judas seated at the table. 
God's time of final separation is not come — 
"Let them grow together until the harvest." 
He who from all eternity has known his own, 
has named but one test by which to try and 
prove them — "Believest thou in me;" often a 
secret between the soul and God; nay, some- 
times God's alone, for He knows many a child 
whose stricken spirit does not know itself. Men 
would not have it so — men are wiser, and would 



COME UNWORTHILY. 115 

discriminate; they would go in at once and rout 
them out: and hoping to exclude all but the 
elect of God, they make tests that God has never 
made, by which to try and know them. Sub- 
scribe these doctrines, join this particular church; 
we must know, and you must know that you 
are chosen of God, before we admit you to the 
communion of his saints. Yet when all is done, 
and we, poor leaders of the blind, are satisfied, 
your profession may be false, we may be mis- 
taken, and you be lost ones. 

I cannot express too strongly what I think of 
the wisdom of our church, in the very point on 
which it has been impugned; the freeness of her 
administration. The wisdom, I repeat, with 
which she addresses herself to all who shall be 
religiously and devoutly disposed, that do mind 
to come to the holy communion of the body and 
blood of our Saviour Christ; reminds them of 
the dignity of that holy mystery, and the great 
peril of the unworthy receiving of it; warns the 
impenitent and unbelieving not to come ; and 
then addressing the communicants by such a 
description as can alone entitle them to draw 
near — "Ye that do truly and earnestly repent 
you of your sins," &c. leaves to themselves the 
peril of a false profession. A false profession it 
most truly is, if any one who ought to have 
been excluded, can proceed with the appointed 
words; if, not repenting, not believing, not pur- 
posing or wishing to amend, the bold, unfit com- 



116 OP THOSE THAT 

municant ventures to draw near upon such a 
bidding, and pronounce the words appointed for 
his use. 

"If we would judge ourselves, we should not 
be judged." You then who are coming and do 
constantly or occasionally come to the table of 
the Lord, consider well what the profession is 
you are required to make: consider, that when 
you have made it, and the church has accepted 
it, and God has heard it, it may be a false pro- 
fession. "And when the king came in to see 
the guests, he saw there a man that had not on 
a wedding garment." The Master did not 
blame his servants for the incautious admission 
of his unworthy guest, for he had bidden them 
to gather together all that could be found, as 
many as would, and bring them to the feast; 
the graceless intruder bore the condemnation. 
" Bind him hand and foot and take him away, 
and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be 
weeping and gnashing of teeth; for many are 
called, but few are chosen." "After he had 
received the sop, Satan entered into him." The 
moment when the superstitious, self-righteous 
or impenitent soul has satisfied and dulled itself 
by the performance of a religious duty, may not 
perhaps be the time at which the forbearing and 
most pitiful God will give the word of final 
separation; but it is the very opportunity for 
Satan to take more full possession of his own, 
and harden the heart in unbelief and sin. And 



COME UNWORTHILY. 117 

if he was present, as we see he was, at that most 
holy feast, where Jesus and the chosen twelve 
sat down alone, can we select a company so 
pure, or shut the door so close, or leave so few 
within, that he will not be one? 

The benefit of the communion is limited to a 
number — to the faithful. It is said to be recei- 
ved in taking the elements, not derived from 
them; and limited to the condition of the recipi- 
ent. " The benefit is great, if with a truly peni- 
tent heart and lively faith we receive the holy 
sacrament: for then we spiritually eat the flesh 
of Christ and drink his blood; then we dwell in 
Christ, and Christ in us; we are one with Christ 
and Christ with us." The church does not, 
I apprehend, mean to say that the act of eat- 
ing and drinking the elements, either occasions 
us or entitles us to dwell in Christ; neither 
makes us to be, nor proves us to be one with 
him. The worthy or unworthy partaking of 
them is an evidence, but not a cause of those 
different states of mind to one of which the bene- 
fits are limited. This cannot, I think, be better 
illustrated than in the material symbols through 
which it is exhibited. God has chosen the foolish 
things of this world to confound the wise, and the 
commonest things of this world to illustrate the 
most mysterious. Meat and drink are the most 
frequent emblems of the divine operations within 
the soul, " My body is meat indeed, my blood 
is drink indeed." " Whoso shall drink of the 
11* 



118 OF THOSE THAT 

water that I shall give him, shall never thirst; 
but the water that I shall give him, shall be in 
him a well of water springing up into everlasting 
life." Now we know that the bread and the 
wine, and the water, are useless indeed to one 
who is not alive; they cannot give life, nor restore 
it when extinct. So in the communion, if there 
be no living faith within, the soul cannot feed 
upon the body or blood of Christ, however it 
be exhibited before us, and shown forth by us. 
Sufficient it is, and good it is, but not available 
to us, until we be made alive by regeneration of 
the Holy Spirit. We know also that the corpo- 
real food, the bread, the water, aad the wine, 
cannot nourish the living frame unless they be 
taken into it: the contemplation of them will not 
feed us, nor the welcome to them, nor the mere 
persuasion that they are good for food. In like 
manner cannot our souls be benefited, whether 
by the sign or the thing signified, by the means 
of grace, or the pledge to assure us thereof, 
unless Christ be spiritually fed upon by faith in 
the receiving of the same. Regardless of the 
church's warning, and the great peril they incur, 
many there are, who come to the Lord's com- 
munion; — "They sit as my people sitteth;" who 
neither expect nor desire any such blessings. — 
They cherish no memory of Jesus' death: they 
seek no pledges of his truth and love; they want 
no comfort of his Spirit; they are not hungry 
that they should eat, nor thirsty that they should 



COME UNWORTHILY. 119 

drink, nor faint that they should be refreshed; 
neither do they indeed anticipate any such occur- 
rence from the administration of the supper. 
They come on other business. They come to 
satisfy the law of God by an act of devotion; to 
satisfy their conscience by a profession of Chris- 
tianity; they come to avoid some guilt or danger 
that might attend upon absenting themselves, or 
to derive some mysterious benefit from the per- 
formance; perhaps to get remission for past im- 
penitence, forgetfulness, and unbelief, and ease 
of mind in the continuance of them: or help to 
establish their own righteousness, and grace to 
procure salvation for themselves. They come 
to the sacrament to be saved: not to remember 
Him by whom alone is salvation. It is needless 
to say they lose their errand, for at this supper 
no such provision is prepared, and no such bene- 
fits are promised. 

It would be difficult to say which are the 
most unfit communicants, or which at Christ's 
table the most unwelcome; they who bring 
their virtues, or they who bring their sins — they 
who do not intend to renounce their righteous 
pretensions, or they who do not intend to re- 
nounce their unrighteous practices; the one com- 
ing dressed in tissues of their own weaving, the 
others in all the vileness of their native rags; 
both equally refusing to put on the garment of 
salvation Christ has provided for them. The 
two descriptions would probably comprehend 



120 OF THOSE THAT 

the unfit communicants in general — defect of 
principle on the one hand, and of its practical 
influence on the other: if indeed they be ever 
separated. We much doubt it, although we 
consider them under the different aspects unbe- 
lief assumes. It was asked of old, " Ye who de- 
sire to be under the law, do ye not hear the 
law?" and it was said by the same authority — 
" Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, ye make 
clean the outside of the platter." I believe the 
principle and the practice pi the Gospel in its 
spirituality, to be absolutely inseparable what- 
ever may appear. 

It is scarcely to be supposed, that a professed 
Socinian is present at our communion, offering 
divine worship to him whom they believe to be 
no more than man, and ascribing to his blood an 
atoning power, which they believe not that it 
possesses. But many we fear there are, who in 
a very similar state of mind, do indeed " eat and 
drink their own condemnation, not discerning 
the Lord's body," bowing to the outward and 
visible sign, of that of which they do not appre- 
hend the inward and spiritual grace. They do, 
I believe, as much commit an act of idolatry, as 
the Papist who bows before the host; in that 
theyfescribe to the means the benefits exhibited 
in them, and expect from the symbolical cere- 
mony the remission of sins they never con- 
siderately and seriously expected from the death 
and passion of the Lord Jesus Christ. They 



COME UNWORTHILY. 121 

come here once a month, or thrice in the year, to 
make up their accounts with the eternal credi- 
tor; or rather to wipe out the debts of which 
they at least have kept no reckoning, and accre- 
dit themselves with him for a score to come; and 
this they expect to do, not by application of 
the blood of Christ, but by performance of the 
ceremony appointed to represent it. They do 
exactly what the carnal and corrupted Jew did, 
when he induced the Holy One of Israel to say 
of his own appointed sacrifices, " Who has re- 
quired this at your hands? Your new moons 
and your appointed feasts my soul hateth." I 
believe they do all that the Papist does, when 
he receives between his dying lips the conse- 
crated wafer, and believes it a passport to eter- 
nal life. They make a Saviour of the means of 
grace, and attribute to them that living efficacy 
for the remission of sin, and sanctification of 
the soul, which resides only in the blood of God, 
in the blood of him who was God as well as 
man: thus ascribing to the creature the attributes 
of Deity; — the essential character of idolatry. 
pause! and before you lay your hand upon 
that bread, and wet your lips with that myste- 
rious cup, examine yourselves, what you really 
think it is: "Bread and wine, which the Lord 
hath commanded to be received." Yes, but do 
you believe with equal verity, the thing signi- 
fied — the blood shed, the body broken, the sole 



122 OF THOSE THAT 

atonement for a ruined world, the only method 
of salvation for a sinner — for yourself? That 
blood, the blood of God, shed by you, shed for 
you, without which you must have perished, 
without which, received by faith, you will per- 
ish still? That body, the body of your Lord, 
your risen Lord, seated now on heaven's high 
throne, there pleading still his sufferings and his 
merits against your desert of everlasting death? 
It is not asked if we believe some mysterious 
property in the bread and wine, imparted to it 
by God, for the benefit of our souls — if we think 
that Jesus is really present in them: it is easier 
to believe a miracle, than to believe the truth; 
there is scarce a falsehood or absurdity of hu- 
man invention in religion, that does not find 
more true believers than the great mystery of 
godliness, God manifest in the flesh. The ques- 
tion is, do you believe that mystery? Have you 
examined yourself, whether you do or not? 
"Jesus knew who they were that believed not/* 
" Not discerning the Lord's body." We mnst 
not come here at a venture, and take it for grant- 
ed that we believe, what no one ever did be- 
lieve, without a supernatural influence, for "no 
man can call Jesus Lord, but by the Holy 
Ghost." This is no thing of course. This is 
that faith of God's elect,, without which we 
must not presume to eat of this bread, and 
drink of this cup; pledges of a salvation in 



COME UNWORTHILY. 123 

which, without such faith, we can have no in- 
terest; for "Every spirit that confesseth not 
that Christ is come in the flesh, is not of God." 
But this is not all. There are Pharisees at 
the Lord's table: these come not from the lanes 
and hedges; they are the well-dressed guests, 
who come to buy the Saviour with more worth- 
less coin than Judas sold him for — their own 
supposed deserving. They do, or rather they 
did once, require a Saviour, but that was long 
ago, perhaps before their baptism. Christ has 
died, and risen, and gone again to heaven, and 
left the gate open for all that can make their 
way to its eternal portal. Methinks the Chris- 
tian Pharisee is worse than they of old: they 
brought the mint, the anise, and the cummin, 
the tything of their own: but these have rob- 
bed the Lord's garden for their gifts, and bring 
the benefits of his death as merits of their own, 
to buy an interest in it. He has given them 
pardon, grace, and opportunity: they will use 
these properly, and merit heaven; or — more 
subtle pride! — will merit him who merited it 
for them. Such guests as these have taken 
pains to fit themselves for the communion: they 
have spent some time, it is likely, in preparation 
for it, perhaps a week; for I have heard of com- 
municants who put off attending the Sacrament, 
till they have a leisure week: a temporary 
abstinence from guilty pleasures and covetous 
desires, a compulsory sacrifice of prayer, and 



124 OF THOSE THAT 

reading, and reflection: in short, they have 
done what the church commands, examined 
themselves; they have confirmed their persua- 
sion of God's undoubted mercy, brought to 
remembrance Christ's forgotten death, found 
themselves guiltless towards their neighbors, 
and having satisfied themselves on all these 
points, they bring their persuasion, their good 
resolutions, and their harmlessness, to furnish 
out the provisions of their master's table, and 
while they lay them at his feet, alas, how like 
they are to him who came of old, and said, 
" What lack I yet?" except, indeed, in his sor- 
row, for they go away contented, leaving, not 
unfrequently their costly dress behind them, 
their good resolutions, their remembrance and 
contrition, till wanted for the next week's pre- 
paration. " Go and sell all that thou hast," for 
thou art too rich as yet to follow Christ, or take 
this holy Sacrament to your comfort. " We 
are not worthy to gather up the crumbs under 
thy table." They do not think so. " The re- 
membrance of them is grievous to us, the bur- 
den of them is intolerable." They have no 
such feeling. " In newness of life;" why new? 
they lead very good lives. They were renewed 
in baptism. " All these have I kept from my 
youth up;" or if not, I have repented, and con- 
fessed my sins. — God is merciful, and Christ 
has redeemed me and all mankind. Thus con- 
fused, in fact, are the minds of many upon the 



COME UNWORTHILY. 125 

means of justification before God, and thus un- 
certain whether they depend for salvation upon 
themselves, or God's mercy, or Christ's death, 
or any, or all of them together. But such per- 
sons are not fit communicants at the Lord's 
table; because not having renounced their own 
righteousness, they are not prepared to put on 
the righteousness of Christ, the wedding gar- 
ment made for them: and whether their self- 
righteousness consists of the graces and virtues 
of natural disposition, or assumes the improved 
character of Christian obedience, presented as a 
title to salvation or depended upon as a means 
to it, it is the same ragged and impure garment, 
over which the blessed Jesus will not throw the 
costly mantle of his own pure merits: most 
willing as he is to give it us instead, if these be 
first put off. 

I have said that in the religion of the Gospel, 
principle and practice have no separate reality. 
Faith without works is dead — has no real 
existence: and works without faith are imprac- 
ticable. I do not mean, as assuredly the Apos- 
tle never meant, that they co-exist, as mediums 
of salvation jointly necessary to the justification 
of a sinner. This is denied: because faith only 
is the appointed means by which the blood of 
Jesus is applied to the justification of the soul, 
which becomes eternally complete in Him, 
before any good works are or can be done. 
But the faith which does nothing towards bring- 
12 



126 OF THOSE THAT 

ing the life into conformity with the Gospel, is 
not vital faith — is a creed and not a principle. 
Our argument does not go to show that ihe 
believer in Christ may live in ungodliness and 
be finally rejected, because he brings forth no 
fruit; but that where there is no fruit there is 
no principle of faith, and therefore no believer. 
The wild grapes do not cause, however they 
may prove, the badness of the vine: neither do 
the good fruits make good the tree, which had 
it not been good before, had never borne them. 
I have said, and I think so, that there cannot be 
a correct yet unfruitful principle of religion: 
but there may be a correct yet barren creed. 
For this cause, it is required of them that come 
to the Lord's Supper to examine themselves 
not only as to their contrition for former sins, 
and the reality of their faith in Christ, hut as to 
their intention to lead a godly and religious life. 
"Stedfastly purposing to lead a new life" — no 
doubt " the new life" — the life of the renewed, 
regenerated soul, created anew in Christ Jesus 
unto good works. " If any man be in Christ 
he is a new creature." " Grant that we may 
hereafter serve and please thee in newness of 
life." Here is no boast, no promise; but there 
is and must be in every communicant who 
approaches this most holy table, the honest 
desire, the stedfast purpose, and the believing 
prayer, that we may walk hereafter in all God's 
holy ways. Have we no unfit communicants 



COME UNWORTHILY. 127 

in this particular? Jesus knew who they were 
that should betray him; and Satan knew. 
And he knows still who they are in every 
church communion that say " Lord, Lord; but 
do not the things that he says;" — who come to 
confess their sins, but not to part with them; 
who mean to live hereafter as they have lived 
heretofore; and ask the influences of that Spirit, 
whose power, if they believe in it, they purpose 
to resist. These are that second class whom 
we at first defined as they that bring their 
unrenounced corruptions into Christ's holy 
presence; and do indeed expect and intend, as 
far as in them lies, still to retain them when 
they go away. Perhaps to the latest hour on 
the Saturday night, or trespassing on the open- 
ing of the Sabbath, these communicants have 
been seen among the assemblies of the wicked, 
listening to the profanation of God's sacred 
name, conniving at the transgression of his 
laws — feeding their vanity or stimulating their 
ambition — filling their imagination with unhal- 
lowed images, and wilfully bestirring every 
ungodly passion. They have been scheming 
for their pride, or trafficking for their covetous- 
ness; bargaining to sell their gracious Lord for 
gold, or something that gold can purchase; and 
they intend when the sacrament is over, to 
consummate the bargain; they intend for the 
world's profits, its pleasures, or its opinions, to 
sacrifice his glory and to shame his faith, and 



128 OF THOSE THAT 

help his enemies to put him out of sight and out 
of mind. Oh! it is an awful moment, when the 
sin-loving, earth-devoted communicant, lays 
hand upon the sacred emblems; the strengthen- 
ing of the soul to disobedience — the refreshing 
of the spirit to serve another master — the ple- 
nary indulgence, not the remedy for sin. Is it 
not the very triumph of the evil one? " When 
he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished; 
then goeth he and taketh to him seven other 
spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter 
in and dwell there; and the last state of that 
man is worse than the first." " Eat and drink 
their own damnation." The expression has 
been thought too strong; and were it not in the 
word of God, charity no doubt, would long 
since have expunged it from our ritual. It has 
been certainly misunderstood, so as to beget 
much needless and superstitious terror. We 
have before remarked that the reception of the 
elements does not beget an obligation which 
did not exist before; nor subject the recipient 
to a damnation of which he was otherwise in 
no danger. "He that believeth not is con- 
demned already" — not because he eats the 
sacramental bread and wine — but " because he 
hath not believed in the name of the only-be- 
gotten Son of God," 

But consider what it is the impenitent and 
unbelieving really do on these occasions; and 
the words will scarcely seem too strong, that 



COME UNWORTHILY. 129 

have not proved strong enough to deter them. 
They exhibit their full knowledge of God's 
method of salvation, and give to the terms of it 
their full consent. They peruse the covenant of 
grace, and as it were sign it, by which they who 
are in Christ are saved, they who are not in 
Christ are lost; and they take into their mouths 
the appointed signs and pledges, that so it is, 
and so it shall be; and if the while they have 
not any consciousness of being lost, or any- 
definite purpose of coming to Christ that they 
may be saved; any due sense of the guilt of 
sin, or settled purpose to forsake it; any evi- 
dence of a work of grace upon their hearts, or 
any earnest desire that such a work should 
appear; — what do they, what can they properly 
be said to do, but eat and drink their own dam- 
nation? put into their mouths the witnesses to 
God's immutable truth, and their own eternal 
ruin. 

If there is — it is a painful thought — if we 
must suppose it possible that there should be a 
believer at the altar, who holds the truth in un- 
righteousness; who has indulged, and means 
to indulge, the sins that Jesus died for; who, 
trusting to be covered with his seamless robe of 
merit, wears meantime and is content to wear, 
the garment spotted with the flesh— who loves 
the freeness of the Gospel, but cannot bear its 
strictness; would drink the justifying blood, 
without the purifying water, and feed upon the 
12* 



130 OF THOSE THAT 

flesh, without growing into the likeness of its 
purity: if there is a communicant — our terms 
will be understood where they apply — who on 
some presumptive evidence of sonship, some 
by-gone recognitions of a covenant God, and 
signs of union and adoption in the Beloved, 
does venture with unwashen hands and heart 
unsanctified to touch this mysterious food; let 
such a one consider what he does. " Can ye 
drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of 
devils?" We come together to celebrate the 
death of Him, in whom, if we died, we died to 
sin; — being crucified with Him, that the body 
of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we 
might not serve sin. If we be alive in Christ, 
it is that our members may be instruments of 
righteousness unto God; if we be raised up 
with Him from the dead by the glory of the 
Father, it is that we may walk in newness of 
life. 

Reason there is for all to hear the church's 
warning — lest we eat and drink our own con- 
demnation; provoking Him to plague us with 
divers diseases and sundry kinds of death; to 
heat the furnace of affliction seven times hotter; 
and lay the hand of judgment seven-fold hea- 
vier; and swell to a frightful torrent this gentle 
stream of love, in which we affect to drink 
while we refuse to wash. Most tender and in- 
dulgent Father! thy children will know in hea- 
ven, perhaps, how often they have done this — 



COME UNWORTHILY. 131 

how often met thee here, thy right hand full of 
blessings, but by reason of some cherished sin 
that they have brought with them, forced thee 
to exchange it for a rod; to throw some bitter 
medicament into the cup of life, or hide thy face 
from the polluting imagery of last night's revel- 
ry, or to-morrow's strife, pursuing them to the 
very footstool of thy throne. 



132 



CHAPTER VIII. 

OF THOSE WHO COME WORTHILY. 

Why are ye so fearful? — how is it that ye 
have no faith? When Jesus beholds the trem- 
bling step and sinking heart, the smouldering 
hope and scarcely smouldering expectation, 
with which his people come to take his blessings, 
and sees also how little blest they seem to go 
away — surely if he did not remember whereof 
we are made — if he were not u touched with a 
feeling of our infirmities" — surely He would 
not spread his table any more, for guests so litrle 
hungry when they come — so little satisfied when 
they depart! It is no fault of his, "For what 
could he have done more for his vineyard than 
he has not done." He bought it at no ordinary 
price even no less than his own precious blood. 
With all the glory he had before the world 
began, with all the riches of his Father's throne, 
with all the fulness of his own eternal God- 
head, relinquished, put aside: — with poverty 
and shame, and mortal anguish, a broken body 
and a broken heart, He bought this little vine- 
yard. Oh how he must have loved it! And 
when He had bought it, he had it not — he paid 
the price, but another was in possession, and 



OF THOSE THAT COME WORTHILY. 133 

Jesus had to conquer what he had bought so 
dear. There was not an entrance but was 
barred against him, and sin, and death and hell 
were at the gates! Do we say were there? 
They are there still! Step by step, one by 
one, the blessed Lord has had to win his own; 
his own unwilling, resisting, refusing: — "Be- 
hold, I stand at the door and knock. ** By pa- 
tient and long-suffering pity; by warnings for- 
gotten and promises disbelieved; by his disputed 
word, by his resisted Spirit, by his despised and 
persecuted servants; by patient pleadings of un- 
requited love, and ceaseless prayers before the 
Father's throne, the Saviour conquers out his 
scant inheritance, and brings to submission a re- 
luctant people. Oh! think if he does not love 
them! And does his work end here? When 
he has bought, and conquered, and entered into 
possession— when he has fenced it and planted 
it, and hedged it round, and built a tower in the 
midst — in the communion of his separated 
church, in the little company of his regenerate 
people, does the blessed Redeemer come into his 
fair garden to see the grapes cluster and the 
wine-press flowing, and find all fruitfulness and 
beauty round him? 

No. His purchase is a spot of sterile earth; 
his conquest is an untamed wilderness. It is 
like those fastnesses of unknown lands which 
earthly princes sell or give away to whoever 
can find or conquer them: they must fell the 



134 OF THOSE THAT 

forest before they can have a dwelling-place, or 
gather any harvest of their fields. More easy 
task! for these at least find materials for their 
work. But Jesus, when he comes into the 
heart, finds nothing — nothing but what is against 
him; perverted intellect, and adverse habits, and 
preoccupied affections: full, full to the very ex- 
tremity of things inimical. In a pestilent air 
and an ungracious soil, the Saviour cultivates 
his precious garden; precious indeed, if valued 
by its cost; most precious, if by the love he has 
manifested for it. By his word, too slowly 
learned; by his Spirit, too often grieved; by 
judgments provoked and blessings undervalued, 
and opportunities and ordinances neglected, this 
never-wearied husbandman plies his loving toil. 
For a confiding, trusting, and rejoicing people? 
No! Let the heart of every believer answer for 
itself, what sort of love does love like this 
beget? Suspicious, anxious, apprehensive; 
wanting fresh proofs of love so dearly proved; 
and when he grants them, doubting, doubting 
still: doubting, lest he who loved should change 
his mind, and rid himself of his too costly pur- 
chase. Oh, if its worthlessness could do it; — if 
ill-requiting could have changed it — if he had 
not fro 11 ail eternity foreseen tha' those lie died 
for, would be afraid to trust him, and borne 
up'on his cross this deadliest sin of all; he never 
need have left his Father's throne, for not a 
sinner had been saved! We do not know — 



COME WORTHILY. 135 

but I could think, for Jesus was a man — 
that on that night in which he was betrayed, 
at that funereal supper — so sad, so sorrowful; 
I could think it was not the treachery of Judas 
that was heaviest on him; for Judas was none 
of his, he was not about to expiate Judas' sin: 
Peter's denial, and Thomas's unbelief, and the 
strife, and cowardice, and abandonment of all, 
were in the Saviour's thoughts, when he took 
bread, and brake it, and gave it to his disci- 
ples. And if the eye of his omniscient God- 
head looked at that moment through the extent 
of time, and saw in every future communion of 
his saints, how few would justly estimate his 
love, or come in full assurance of his truth; 
what fearful, unwilling, unconfiding communi- 
cants would come, what unblest, uncomforted, 
unthankful ones would go away: surely had his 
love been any thing less than infinite, it would 
have died before it cost him life! Our subject 
overbears us; I wished to take some measure 
of the Saviour's love, I wished to express the 
little I can think of its immeasurable greatness. 
But I have foiled, I have said less than I know, 
which yet is all but as a drop to the unbounded 
ocean. Perhaps it is like the traveller's first 
vision of the distant Alps, he is only sure he 
sees them, and that they as much exceed his 
expectations, as they exceed all other things he 
sees. 

Such a one is He who has made a supper, and 



136 OF THOSE THAT 

bade many — bade all; for as there is but one 
name under which salvation is offered to man- 
kind — the name of sinner — he amongst us who 
cannot claim that title, alone can say he has re- 
ceived no invitation. But because Jesus knows 
whereof we are made; the mortal darkness of 
our spiritual sense, our inaptness to perceive the 
things unseen, and keep in mind what only faith 
lays hold of, he has clothed in sensible images 
eternal things, making outward and visible signs 
a means of intercourse between Himself who is 
a spirit, and man who is but dust. " To the end 
that we should always remember the exceeding 
great love of our Master and only Saviour Jesus 
Christ, thus dying for us, and the innumerable 
benefits which by his precious blood-shedding 
he hath obtained to us; he hath instituted and 
ordained holy mysteries, as pledges of his love, 
and for a continual remembrance of his death, 
to our great and endless comfort." The terms 
in which we are bidden to the sacramental cere- 
mony, are the same in which we are invited to 
the cross of Christ; our title to partake of it is 
the same as our title to the benefits of his death. 
The preparation on our part is the same, the fit- 
ness the same, the state of mind the same, and 
the perceptible effects the same, as required of 
them who come to Christ: and the exclusion, if 
either we come not, or coming not aright, be 
finally cast out, will be in either case the same. 
u Ye will not come unto me that ye might have 



COME WORTHILY. 137 

life;" — "not discerning the Lord's body;" — 
11 not having on a wedding garment." 

Viewing the Sacrament thus, I cannot contem- 
plate the necessity of a ceremonial preparation 
for it. The state in which a believer habitually 
lives is the state in which he is required to ap- 
pear at the table; and there is no moment of our 
spiritual course in which we can safely be unfit 
for the worthy receiving of the bread and wine. 
I mean safely as to our own perception of our 
condition in Jesus Christ. Who is safe in the 
eternal purpose of the Most High, whose name 
is written where there never shall be found a 
blot, is God's own secret; the believer reads his 
name, his new name, written on the fleshly tab- 
lets of a regenerated heart; he sees it, as we see 
the star of night upon the clear smooth waters; 
no vague uncertain indication of what is reflect- 
ed from above, though liable to be darkened by 
intervening clouds, or broken by the perturba- 
tion of the waters. We know it will be answer- 
ed in favor of a preparation, that the state of a 
Christian is no such definite thing; the greater 
number of those who come and ought to come 
to the Lord's table, are of doubtful minds 
whether they be in Christ or not — whether or 
not they are living a life of faith, and walking 
not after the flesh but after the Spirit. This in- 
deed is more true than it ought to be; and it is 
far from my desire to discountenance self-exami- 
nation. "Examine yourselves whether ye be 
13 



138 OF THOSE THAT 

in the faith :" "Give diligence to make your 
calling and election sure/' Indeed, however 
sure it is, however firm the believer stands upon 
the rock of ages, Christian assurance is not of 
that kind, that needs no renewed examination. 
It is not a bold and fearless confidence, that 
having once upon sufficient evidence realised 
our interest in the death of Christ, and our union 
with him, has no further occasion to look into 
our security. There is too much within, and 
too much without, to shake the believer's faith 
and cloud his confidence, to admit of such a state. 
Safe he is, and safe he knows himself to be, for 
he has built his house upon a rock: but when 
the waters break beneath, and the tempest black- 
ens above, he casts many an inquiring look upon 
the firm foundation on which his hopes are 
stayed. The most assured believer is only sure, 
because every inquiry brings the same gracious 
promise back; every fresh examination unfolds 
new proofs of Jesus' faithfulness and love, every 
fear that sin awakens, or Satan whispers, is al- 
layed by the renewed witness of the indwelling 
Spirit. The church as well as the Scriptures 
requires all who "do mind to come to the 
Lord's table to examine themselves," but in 
neither is it said to prepare themselves. And I 
know that those persons whose indeterminate 
character, or unstable faith, or habitual infirmities 
of the flesh, keep them in uncertainty as to their 
acceptance with the Father, and union with the 



COME WORTHILY. 139 

Son, and vitality in the Spirit, are exactly the 
persons most likely to delude or to enslave 
themselves by what is called a preparation; — to 
mistake for principle a superindnced emotion, 
and trust their faith to periodical revivals. 

Few things can be more adverse to a genuine 
growth in grace, than such a fitful culture, leav- 
ing to prolonged sterility the exhausted soil, and 
to speedy distaste the questionable fruits. We 
will even suppose a case, in which a season of 
preparation might seem the most necessary for 
the recovery of a right state of mind preparatory 
to the feast. Let it be, for example, the case of 
a Christian, whose mind has been so much oc- 
cupied during the past weeks, that he has not 
had time to think about the condition of his soul, 
to realise his faith and penitence, or examine the 
state of his spiritual affections: and he hesitates 
in this condition to approach the Lord's table. 
Now this absorption of feeling in the things of 
time, has been wilful, or it has been providential. 
If wilful, nothing can be more injurious, than to 
suppose it may go on with certain or uncertain 
intervals of devotional leisure preparatory to the 
Sacrament. When it has unhappily occurred, 
it is to be deeply repented and deprecated for all 
time to come; not compensated by a week of 
preparation: this were indeed to live without 
God in the world, three weeks out of four. If 
on the contrary, the pressure of occupation has 
been unusual and providential, I know no kinder 



140 OF THOSE THAT 

interposition of divine love for the healing and 
refreshing of the soul, than this Sacrament itself, 
no sweeter rest from the enforced labor, no ho- 
lier, fitter opportunity to retrieve the unwilling 
declension of spiritual life. When can the hun- 
gry soul be so well prepared to feed, as when it 
has been long obliged to fast? When hasten to 
the fount with so much zest, as when the scorch- 
ing sun and thirsty soil have drunk up all the 
streams? "Come unto me all ye that are weary 
and heavy-laden" — weary of earth's toils, and 
laden with its unwilling cares. Do not wait to 
appease your hunger, and sate your thirst before 
you come — the table is spread and the provision 
free; "Take, eat," to the strengthening and re- 
freshing of your souls. 

If it be necessary to consider another case, a 
still more painful case, to contemplate a period 
in the Christian's life, in which he who has been 
used to take these elements to his great and end- 
less comfort, has lost the witness of the Spirit 
within him — lost the evidences of his title to 
partake of them; a period when he does not 
repent him of his former sins, believe the pro- 
mises of God in Jesus Christ, or purpose to walk 
henceforth in the way of his commandments — 
that soul is in a position of misery and danger 
in which it cannot pause: there is more to do 
than to prepare for the Sacrament. The back- 
slider has to make again his calling and election 
sure; to go again, as at the first, a contrite pro- 



COME WORTHILY. 141 

digal to his father's house. For whatever he 
may have heretofore enjoyed, however sure he 
may heretofore have been of his acceptance, he 
can keep neither the joy nor the assurance, while 
he lives apart and defiles the temple of the Holy 
Ghost. " I am no more worthy to be called thy 
son." Again he must assume the publican's 
part, for the seal of adoption is hidden on his 
brow. Happy if there be enough of memory 
left, to stimulate and encourage him to return. 
If this be the mind of such an one, under; a full 
sense of his defection, self-known, and self-con- 
demned. I do not know why the altar where 
the pledges of pardon and reconciliation are ex- 
hibited, should be an unfit place to throw himself 
again upon his Father's mercy, and receive again 
the tokens of forgiveness. But if the backslider 
be of another mind; if he feel no anguish, no 
compunction, no determination to leave his wan- 
derings and return to God — we have spoken to 
this case before — he must not come at all — no 
preparation can make him fit to come, till grace 
has broken his heart. 

I cannot but think, and it is the bearing of 
much that I have said, that there is a misappre- 
hension in the minds of many Christians respect- 
ing the nature of this rite, injuriously affecting 
those who come, only less than those whom it 
unreasonably keeps away. It is not contem- 
plated as a feast of love, a memorial exclusively 
of mercy. "Ye are not come unto the mount 
13* 



142 OP THOSE THAT 

that might be touched, and that burned with 
fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tem- 
pest." 

Our Christian communion is not one of those 
bloody sacrifices of the law, whereby was " re- 
membrance again made of sins every year," 
neither an offering " of those gifts and sacri- 
fices that could not make him that did the ser- 
vice perfect, as pertaining to the conscience." 
It is not even an exhibition of the wrath of God 
in the death of the only-begotten Son, to alarm 
the sinner, and impress upon the conscience the 
inevitable consequences of unforgiven sin. For 
if it were, a quite different company should be 
called together: the careless, the impenitent, the 
unbelieving, would be the fittest communicants, 
whose presence is now forbidden. No, if we 
are called at this gracious time to the remem- 
brance of our sins, it is only to enhance the love 
that, far as the east is from the west, has put our 
iniquities from us. If we are made to confess 
them, it is only as 'a reckoning kept of debts 
that another pays, to estimate the sum we owe 
— of gratitude to the forgiver, not of penalty to 
the exacter of his dues. Unexpiated and unfor- 
given sin, justice and judgment and everlasting 
death, are not brought into sight at all by this 
exhibition of the death of Christ — else why are 
none bidden, but they who are pardoned, recon- 
ciled, and born anew; of whom the word says, 
"that they shall not come into judgment;" — of 



COME WORTHILY. 143 

whom Christ has said, " that they shall never 
die!" This is no outer-court, where strangers 
stand, and servants wait, and criminals expect 
their arraignment, and petitioners the rejection 
of their suit. It is not for me to say what com- 
pany the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords 
beholds, when he comes at these set times, to sit 
between the cherubim on the mercy seat: the 
veil of the sanctuary undrawn; neither what he 
foresaw when he said at the first communion, 
" There are some among you that believe not:" 
— " Ye are not all clean." But by all the con- 
versation that He held at that first supper, by all 
his loving words, and provident cares, and 
strong assurances, I judge it is no such assembly 
he addresses or has provided for in the richness 
of the blessings he bestows. " Henceforth I 
call ye not servants" — " but I have called you 
friends." " If ye abide in me, and my words 
abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it 
shall be done unto you." u As the Father hath 
loved me, so have I loved you." "These 
things have I spoken to you that my joy might 
remain in you, and that jour joy might be 
full." " Greater love hath no man than this, 
that a man lay down his life for his friends." 
" If a man love me, he will keep my words; and 
my Father will love him; and we will come 
unto him and make our abode with him. Ye 
have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, 
that ye should bring forth much fruit, and that 



144 OF THOSE THAT 

your fruit should remain." " Peace I leave 
with you, my peace I give unto you. Let not 
your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." 
" These things have I spoken to you, that ye 
might have peace; in the world ye shall have 
tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have over- 
come the world." This, and such as this is the 
language^of the blessed Jesus to his first com- 
municants; and through them to all who should 
thereafter eat of his flesh and drink his blood, in 
faithful repetition of the ceremony. Here is no 
mention of death, and judgment, and the wrath 
to come; even the wrath and condemnation past 
are out of sight, buried in promises of peace 
and love. In similar language would he now 
address us; in similar language does he now ad- 
dress us through the administration of his feast. 
"Hear what comfortable words our Saviour 
Christ said to all that truly turn unto him, 
6 Come unto me, all that travail and are heavy 
laden, and I will refresh you.' " " So God loved 
the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, to 
the end that all that believe in him should not 
perish, but have everlasting life." " Take, eat, 
this is my body which was broken for you — 
this is my blood which was shed for you." 
Can this be the mysterious imagery that scares 
the trembling sinner from the table, and sinks 
the heart of the penitent as he approaches? 
"Lift up the hands that hang down, and 
strengthen the feeble knees." A mystery it is — 



COME WORTHILY. 145 

worthy, by its impassable distance from all 
finite comprehension, to be the plan and pur- 
pose of the Infinite; but in the palpable ex- 
hibition and design, and adaptation of it, as ob- 
vious, as apprehensible, as food is to the appe- 
tite, as rest is to the weary, as peace is to the 
troubled, as love is to the longings and achings 
of the soul. 

Gracious King! Princes of this world when 
they make a feast for their brethren and friends, 
and such as have the privilege of their chamber, 
do never meet so sad a company as thine. They 
too may find an enemy disguised, a traitor con- 
cealed among the visitors; but they will not 
meet with such strange friends as thou dost! 
so loath to show themselves, so doubtful of 
their welcome, so ^ispicious and mistrustful of 
thy favor; uncertain between a blessing and a 
curse. The favored subject knows his opportu- 
nity, the adopted brother expects a brother's 
welcome, the children of the household look for 
royal gifts. Nay, we may go lower than this 
to shame our cold expectancy. " The ox know- 
eth his owner, and the ass his master's crib, but 
my people do not know/' — they hesitate, they 
doubt, they turn away disconsolate from my 
tokens of affection. " Reach hither thy finger, 
and behold my hands, and reach hither thy 
hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not 
faithless, but believing." 

Never, I think, may we so fully realise the 



146 OF THOSE THAT 

actual presence of the Redeemer, in all the sym- 
pathising attributes of his manhood, as in this 
little communion of his saints, when the doors 
are closed upon the unbelieving world, and all 
but himself and his are supposed to be shut out. 
As in his risen body upon earth, he was invisi- 
ble to all but those who had loved him, and 
accepted him in the flesh, so here when the 
door is shut, and only the disciples pray within, 
we may behold Jesus standing in the midst, 
manifesting himself to us as he does not to the 
world. The world may contemplate a distant 
God, a first Creator, an unseen Ruler, and a 
future Judge. The disciples of Jesus only can 
behold in Deity the Son of Man; hold converse 
with Deity in a nature like their own, and 
recieve the gifts of Deity frohi a brother's hand. 
I have said something in discouragement of a 
ceremonial preparation of the Lord's Supper; 
but there is a preparation more suitable. " He 
that descended is the same also that ascended 
up far above all heavens, that he might fill all 
things." The same Jesus whose death and 
passion we commemorate, sits now on heaven's 
throne, the sole distributor of heaven's gifts. 
" Wherefore he saith, when he ascended up on 
high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts to 
men." Surely if there be a time above every 
other time in which this enthroned Giver's 
hand is full of the costly purchases of his suffer- 
ing, it must be when he comes to commemorate 



COME WORTHILY. 147 

the price at which he bought them; comes in to 
sup— it is his own familiar word — with the elect 
members of his body upon earth. The most 
suitable preparation for such a time of largess, 
I think is to be ready with our wants, to pre- 
pare our requests, to determine what we will 
have of all that he comes laden with to distri- 
bute. I think that we should be prepared, at 
each returning season of administration, with 
the immediate and individual wants that are 
most pressing on us at the time. If there is 
some sin that we have struggled hard against, 
and have not conquered, some duty we have 
not found strength or spirit to perform; if there 
is some fear upon our souls, or apprehensive 
dread of things to come; if any sorrow, deeper 
than mortal ken, unreached by mortal sympa- 
thy — any difficulty, any impossibility — nay, for 
I must not stop short — if there be a shame that 
dares not show itself to earthly eyes, a remorse 
that earthly judgment would not pity — if 
Uriah's image be graven upon David's heart, 
or the false oath still sound on Peter's lips — 
with these, even all of these let the penitent 
believer make himself ready, furnish himself 
out, take them in his hand, against the moment 
when in the midst of the banquet the king shall 
hold out the golden sceptre and say, " What is 
thy petition and it shall be granted thee? What 
is thy request and it shall be performed?" 
Here let the father bring his profligate child, 



148 OF THOSE THAT 

and here the wife her unbelieving husband, and 
here the persecuted saint his enemies; and say- 
again the long-repeated prayer, and ask again 
the still-ungranted boon. It has been done — 
has it been ever done in vain? Month after 
month the communicant of a sorrowful spirit 
has been seen — seen of the Lord, mistaken of 
all beside, wondered at, perhaps rebuked — 
" Why weepest thou, why eatest thou not, why- 
is thy soul grieved?" " She spake in her heart, 
only her lips moved, but her voice was not 
heard." The same besetting sin, the same 
abiding sorrow, the same overwhelming want 
still holden forward in the suppliant hand. 
"Out of the abundance of my complaint and 
grief have I spoken hitherto." There has 
seemed no acceptance, but never a repulse — no 
answer, perhaps, but an encouraging smile, 
that seemed to say, Come again; until she that 
came long in bitterness of soul, has come at 
last in joy, and gone her way, her countenance 
no more sad. 1 Sam. i, 1. 



149 



CHAPTER IX. 

OF THOSE THAT HAVE COME, AND FAITHFULLY 
RECEIVED THE SACRAMENT. 

" Whatsoever things ye desire when ye 
pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall 
have them." It is a strong expression, but it is 
the word of him who knew what he required, 
and for what he undertook. The promise is 
without limitation, but the required faith is of no 
common kind. It is not the belief that God can 
do for us whatsoever we ask; it is not the com- 
mon persuasion that God heareth prayer, and 
may be intreated by us. There is a reach of 
faith, not only far beyond this, but beyond even 
the more definite belief, or rather hope, that it 
may please God at any special time to grant us 
our request, which supports the believer in his 
time of need, and is usually sufficient to that end: 
for it seems to be the merciful provision of God 
for our weak estate, that the soul can feed on 
hope, when faith is not strong enough to taste 
assurance. But our Lord proposes more. St. 
John carries this out when he says, " This is the 
confidence we have in him, that if we ask any- 
thing according to his will, he heareth us: and 
if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask 
14 



150 FAITHFULLY RECEIVING 

we know that we have the petitions that we de- 
sired of him." Such was the confidence of Elias, 
when " He prayed fervently that it might not 
rain, and it rained not on the earth by the space 
of three years and six months." It was the 
confidence of Hannah, when, before she saw 
the accomplishment of her wishes, otherwise 
than by the eye of faith, she went away and did 
eat. It was the faith of the centurion, when it 
was said to him, "As thou believest, so be it 
done unto thee," and he went away satisfied 
with the reply. How often, or must I say how 
seldom such a faith is in exercise when we pray, 
we must answer to ourselves; but we shall never 
find that where the condition has been fulfilled, 
the undertaking of our Lord has fallen short. It 
is no discouragement that there is a reservation 
of God's will, and the suppliant cannot certainly 
know if the petition be according to his will or 
not. In especial cases, such as those of Elijah 
and Hannah, there was no doubt a divine inti- 
mation to the soul, that such was the will of 
God, as I suppose there always is, when such a 
faith is exercised in prayer for any temporal ob- 
ject, not comprehended in the general promises: 
the prayer and the belief are both of God, a pre- 
lude and indication of his acceptance of them.— 
But the greater, and by far the most important 
part of the things we seek of God in prayer, are 
those in which there is no doubt about his will. 
" He willeth not that any should perish, but that 



THE SACRAMENT. 151 

all should come to the knowledge of the truth." 
" This is the will of God, even your sanctifica- 
tion." " This is the will of him that sent me, 
that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth 
on him, may have everlasting life." In all that 
affects the welfare of the soul, in all our spiritual 
petitions, the will of God is certainly known. — 
For pardon, holiness, and peace; for faith, and 
hope, and charity; for application of the blood 
of Christ, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the 
glory of the Father in us, and by our means, 
against temptation, and all manner of sin, against 
the world, the flesh, and the Devil, we pray with 
no uncertainty of the will of God; though even 
for these things he will be inquired of, not to in- 
duce his willingness, but to manifest our own. 
With reference to things merely temporal, there 
are general promises and declarations of God's 
will, quite as unlimited as the eternal promises, 
such as the " all things needful — no good thing 
withheld — no want of any manner of thing that 
is good; no sparrow falling to the ground uncared 
for — no hair of the head unnumbered." To 
this extent, even in earthly good, the reservation 
of God's will is no impediment to believing 
prayer, for wherever there is promise, there may 
be the full exercise of faith upon it. In more 
definite desires, for which there is no special pro- 
mise, and man in his ignorance cannot know 
whether or not they be included in these general 
ones, because he does not know if they be good; 



152 FAITHFULLY RECEIVING 

there is still no more reservation in the promise 
than will be always in the wise man's prayer, 
and in the desire of the believing heart. We do 
not wish them, we would in no wise have them 
in opposition to our Maker's will. If, when we 
ask an egg, our heavenly Father knows it would 
prove a scorpion to us, we do not mean to urge 
the unconditional suit, and have it granted at all 
ventures. " Whatsoever" then — let us repeat the 
gracious words, " whatsoever things ye desire 
when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and 
ye shall have them." 

If this were realised, what treasure-laden 
guests would leave the Saviour's table — what 
gladdened eyes and throbbing hearts. Let us 
look over the petitions we have offered, and 
suppose for a moment they have all been grant- 
ed. "For thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ's sake, 
forgive us all that is past:" — " Pardon and deli- 
ver you from all your sins:" — "Not weighing 
our merits but pardoning our offences." Those 
offences so grievous to remember, those sins so 
intolerable to us to bear, all pardoned, all re- 
moved, and all in immutable promise overcome; 
our sinful bodies made clean by his body, our 
souls washed in his most precious blood. "Grant 
that we may ever hereafter serve and please 
thee in newness of life." "Confirm and strength- 
en you in all goodness." "That all we who are 
partakers of this holy communion, may be ful- 
filled with thy heavenly benediction." " So to 



THE SACRAMENT. 153 

assist us with thy grace, that we may continue 
in that holy fellowship, and do all such good 
works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in. 5 ' 
Holiness, devotedness, conformity to the mind 
and will of God, for which our hearts have failed 
with longing, and our strength is gone with 
struggling, are here all pledged, and granted to 
our prayers; the good works prepared for us to 
do — the grace bestowed sufficient to the doing 
of them, not by our poor measurement of what 
we require, or God requires of us; but by his 
own eternal provision for our happiness and his 
glory, in the way of his commandments. "And 
bring you to everlasting life." " That we may 
evermore dwell in him and he in us." The end 
secured as well as the means provided, God's 
glory and honor pledged for our everlasting life; 
our fears and doubts about the issue all allayed; 
and every insufficiency or mutability of ours, 
provided against by immediate and eternal union 
with the all-sufficient, immutable Son of God. 
"He in me, and I in you; the things that I do, 
ye shall do also." 

We have recalled these few of our public and 
general petitions, made special as they should 
have been by every communicant for himself, 
and applied to the immediate pressure of his 
wants; and we say, that to believing prayer 
every one of these petitions has been granted, 
and is to be realised according to the specific 
bearing of our prayers. For as different images 
14* 



154 FAITHFULLY RECEIVING 

are made use of to designate different wants — 
hunger and thirst and sickness and weariness, 
with each its own provision: so at the spiritual 
banquet there is a distribution suited to the ap- 
petite of every separate guest. We need only 
to know our wants, and take our own prepared 
portion. For example, there are times when 
the desire for pardon so overbears every other 
wish, nothing else can be relished, and the cry 
for mercy can alone be raised. There are other 
times when pardon is so assured as to be lost 
sight of in yearnings after the sanctification of 
the Spirit. Sometimes it is the past, and some- 
times the present, and sometimes the future that 
weighs most upon us; sometimes our own cares, 
and sometimes our care for others. The provi- 
dent master has foreseen all this, and spreads his 
multiplied provisions out, and bids us take our 
choice. The grateful, and satisfied, and rejoicing 
guest should go away feeling that he receives 
the especial object of his prayers. I say espe- 
cial, because I think we lose by sinking in gene- 
ral petitions for what is always needful, the 
recollection and solicitation of our immediate 
and more sensible desires. Prepared with these 
desires, furnished with our wants, our miseries, 
and our sins, if we go in holy confidence to the 
table, expecting to receive our portion at the 
Saviour's hand; it is due to his love, his honor, 
and his truth, that we come not away disconso- 
late, dissatisfied, desponding. The faith that 



THE SACRAMENT. 155 

suffices to take ns to our knees, proves some- 
times insufficient to outlast the prayer: and they 
who come in faith to seek a boon, go away 
without any persuasion of having obtained it. 
Yet this is not the divine injunction. "Believe 
that ye receive them/' and it is not the Apostle's 
experience only, " We know that we have the 
petitions that we desired of him." Believe then, 
when you leave the sacramental feast, that you 
have verily and indeed eaten of the life-giving 
flesh, and drunk of the atoning, purifying blood; 
and as he that has eaten feels his strength re- 
newed, and he that has drunk feels refreshed, so 
perceptible and so assured will be the replenish- 
ment of the spiritual life. We have met our 
Lord in the place of his appointment. We have 
been admitted to the chosen company of his 
friends — been welcomed as his brethren, even 
as the elect members of his own body. We 
have asked of him, at this season of near com- 
munion and preferential love, whatsoever we 
desired in our hearts; and we have not been, if 
we have asked believing, we cannot have been, 
refused. Are we startled by this proposition? 
Do our thoughts revert to times when we have 
asked and had not; have repeated day by day, 
it may be, year by year, the unaccepted prayer, 
till Satan has seemed to mock our pertinacity, 
and moved our hearts to say that God has failed. 
Oh! we can all recal such times, with their soul- 
sinking bitterness, the malignant triumph of the 



156 FAITHFULLY RECEIVING 

powers of darkness, and the relaxing hold of an 
almost expiring faith. 

Perhaps we all know how such a memory- 
comes like a black spirit athwart our prayers, 
at the very moment when faith is about to real- 
ise the promise, and take the blessing home. For 
surely the great enemy knows— however we 
may doubt it, and no mortal ear may hear it — 
he knows that at the moment believing prayer 
goes up, the grant from heaven is sure, and he 
puts forth his utmost power to mar such prayers, 
by injecting sudden doubts and painful recollec- 
tions. Presumption! — delusion! — the thought 
darts like a flash of lightning across our minds, 
and the vision is obscured, and the petition halts, 
and faith draws back, and doubt takes the place 
of confidence. Happy, if the suppliant at such 
a time can say, "An enemy hath done this." 
An enemy has done it, for such a prayer, if he 
should let it pass, would shake his throne be- 
neath him. "Get thee behind me, Saian!" is 
the reply of one who understands the artifice. 

But the inexperienced believer, perhaps, will 
say, " This is no exercise of the imagination. If 
it be said to us at the altar, " Go in peace, be ye 
warmed, and be ye filled," and we find our- 
selves famished and naked as we came, how 
can we exercise faith upon imaginary gifts, and 
believe we have what we have not? And is it 
not, after all, a fact, that we have frequently 
sought God in vain?" We say it is not a fact, 



THE SACRAMENT. 157 

because we know it cannot be. It is in reason, 
in revelation, and in experience impossible, 
that God should refuse any thing good to them 
that are in Jesus Christ. Is it reasonable — is 
it in common sense supposable — does not God 
himself condescend to use this most definitive 
argument, " He that spared not his own son, 
but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not 
with him also freely give us all things?" " If 
when we were enemies, we were reconciled to 
God by his death, much more, being reconciled, 
shall we be saved by his life." When Christ 
has so loved us, and so bought us, and by so 
much labor made us willing, is it possible that 
there should be found at last unwillingness in 
him, or indifference that we perish in his hands. 
If I should say of things in earth or heaven, 
what seems to me the most inconceivable impos- 
sibility, it is that any sinner should perish who 
trusts to be saved by Christ in the way appoint- 
ed for salvation. But lest it should be — as he 
well knew it would be — that his people mani- 
fest towards him an unreasonableness of mis- 
trust we should scarcely exercise toward a fel- 
low man who loved us; approaching him as one 
so unwilling to do what he has died for, that we 
must win him, or persuade him, or by extraor- 
dinary means induce him to be gracious, and 
never to the last, be confident of success — in 
order that we might have strong consolation, 
who have fled to Christ for refuge — the revealed 



158 FAITHFULLY RECEIVING 

word, in which it is impossible for God to lie, 
has been made to say the utmost that can be 
said, to secure our confidence, and remove our 
fears. We need not here appeal to it, for 
every reader of the Scripture knows how ample, 
how direct, how unconditional are the promises 
it contains. I repeat it unconditional, for there 
is not a condition appended to the gift of sal- 
vation that is not comprehended in it, that is not 
a part of it; whether it be repentance, or faith, 
or prayer, or perseverance, or obedience unto 
holiness, all are the free gift of God, and the 
purchase of Jesus' blood; all constitute one 
whole salvation, provided, not demanded; be- 
stowed, and not exacted: the wedding garment 
made ready at the feast, with which we have 
nothing to do, except to put it on. " Put ye 
on the Lord Jesus Christ/' a garment like his 
own mysterious vesture, in which there is no 
seam, and shall never be a rent; nothing that 
has been added, and nothing that can be sepa- 
rated. 

If the doubting communicant reverts from 
reason and revelation to dwell again upon ex- 
perience; if he says again, " but I have eaten 
this bread and drunk this wine, and heard the 
precious promises, and seen these gracious 
pledges, and I am only where I was; my faith 
is no stronger, my hopes are no brighter, my 
sins have still the same dominion over me, my 
sorrow still lies heavy at my heart; my con- 



THE SACRAMENT. 159 

science is as uneasy, and my soul as unsancti- 
fied as ever. I have been to the Sacrament, 
and taken it faithfully, but I feel none of the 
benefits to be received thereby. " I think, then, 
that self-examination is as necessary after the 
Sacrament, as it is before, lest we charge God 
foolishly with unkept promises, and pledges un- 
redeemed. 

When we go to a physician for our bodies' 
health, and receive from him an assurance of 
recovery, there are certain things expected of 
us to that issue. He requires that we give him 
time — that we come as often as he thinks 
proper — that we confide in him to choose his 
remedies, and to choose the order and method 
of applying them; and above all that we follow 
his directions: these are indispensable conditions 
— not by which we may go and cure ourselves, 
but by which we consent to let him cure us. 
Similar are the conditions of the sacramental 
benefits. We examined ourselves before we 
came upon some part of them, whether we 
really knew that we were sick and really desired 
to be made whole, arid truly believed that Christ 
could do it for us; we sought out as far as we 
could discern the symptoms and pains of our 
disorder, that we might lay all before him; and 
we determined to commit ourselves to his care. 
These were the conditions, the only preparation 
required of them who minded to come to the 
Lord's table; and these have been complied 



160 FAITHFULLY RECEIVING 

with. Bat what have we done since? Have 
we consented that the Lord should take his 
time; or because we were not instantly relieved, 
begun to doubt his willingness and power? 
Have we returned as often as he requires; or 
has every little matter of convenience or incon- 
venience deferred our visits, and made us fail 
of our appointments? if indeed we have not 
deliberately and systematically determined that 
four times a year is quite enough for all the 
benefits we expect to receive from this holy 
communion of the body and blood of our 
Saviour Christ. Perhaps we have quarrelled 
with his remedies, and disputed about the means 
wherewith he has proposed to work the cure; 
have thought salvation by faith alone a dan- 
gerous experiment, better not exhibited un- 
mixed with the sanctions of the law: and when 
it is unfolded to us that all shall be of grace, 
have even doubted the justice and wisdom of 
the scheme: or proposed at least some caution 
in the administration of such venturous truths; 
some modifications and reserves in our accept- 
ance of them. In short, have we not minded 
us of some better way to conquer our sins and 
cultivate our graces, and bring to salvation the 
objects of our solicitude, than that which the 
Gospel scheme proposes and the Word reveals? 
Few of us know perhaps to the full extent, 
how difficult it is to be honest in our prayers; 
and to desire at all cost the thing that we intreat 



THE SACRAMENT. 161 

for; and to consent on our own behalf or that 
of those we pray for, to the cutting off the right- 
hand or the casting away of the right-eye, by 
which alone the skilful chirurgeon can preserve 
the life, and bring us to health and peace. Sure 
I am that many an ardent prayer has beeu 
given to the winds, because we would have the 
grant in some way of our own devising; and 
many a longed for blessing been delayed, wait- 
ing our consent to the conditions of it. Most 
eminently is this the case in respect of spiritual 
blessings, seldom conferred in any eminent 
degree without a proportionate sacrifice of ihings 
that nature clings to of this world's treasures, 
its pomp, its pride, and its opinions — or dearer 
still, some treasure of our own, our wisdom or 
knowledge or mental independence. Let us 
examine ourselves. When we ate that bread 
and drank that cup in earnest hope that 
Christ should dwell in us, and we in him, were 
we agreed that he should cast out of our hearts 
all company unsuited to his presence, all that 
we could not take with us into union with 
himself? 

Above all, let the communicant examine 
himself whether he leaves his Saviour's pre- 
sence intending, as far as in him lies, to follow 
the directions given him for the attainment of 
the blessings he has desired honestly and asked 
in faith. Of course — nay, not so much of course 
— for if man is such a stultified bewildered crea- 
15 



162 FAITHFULLY RECEIVING 

ture that he does not always want the thing he 
asks, nor consent to the thing he prays for, how 
likely that he will not pursue the very thing he 
wants. Let the disappointed communicant 
who has asked and not received, has eaten and 
not been strengthened, has drunk, and not felt 
himself refreshed — who returns month by 
month, or week by week, to the ceremony, and 
finds that he becomes no happier, no holier, no 
more at peace with God and detached from this 
world's cares, let him follow out this examina- 
tion of himself; what he does, what he means 
to do, when he leaves the holy feast. It is a 
wide inquiry; for while there was but one way 
in which the good seed fell aright and brought 
forth its hundred fold, there were three ways in 
which it became abortive and brought no fruit 
to perfection: and the ways are so many in 
which the work of salvation may be hindered 
and the Holy Spirit grieved, that we can sug- 
gest but a few in which we consider the benefits 
of the Sacrament may be lost by those who 
have worthily received it: not under extraordi- 
nary temptations and assaults of the adversary, 
by which we may be surprised and forcibly 
robbed of our treasures, but under circum- 
stances, voluntary and habitual, and apparently 
consented to on our part. First consider how 
you intend to pass the remainder of the day, 
after thus feeding in faith upon the body and 
blood of Christ: not, of course, for we speak of 



THE SACRAMENT. 163 

those who profess the name of Christ — not, I 
must suppose, to profane the Sabbath by open 
violation of its sanctity — by taking drives, or 
paying visits, or receiving company, or read- 
ing newspapers, or making preparations for 
to-morrow's business, or recurring to the work 
of yesterday. There is a class of communicants 
who do even this: but we do not suppose them 
comprehended in the number who have re- 
ceived the same worthily — since they have not 
so much as intended to follow the command- 
ments of God, walking from henceforth in his 
holy ways. 

But even Christians do sometimes at the very 
door of the sanctuary renew their worldly con- 
versation, or their worldly thoughts; and before 
the impression of what they have felt has been 
deepened into permanence — before, if we may 
so speak, the ink is dry with which their grant 
of blessings has been signed — wipe off every 
trace of it from their minds; how hardly after- 
wards to renew it, and call back the imperma- 
nent form of heavenly blessedness they just re- 
member to have seen: while faith and hope and 
joy go vainly searching for the manna which the 
sun has melted before they gathered it up, and 
wait famishing the next day's shower. Are 
there not Christians also, who, having brought 
the burthen of their earthly cares to cast it on 
the Lord, do forget or refuse to leave it there; 
and resuming the burden as if it were still their 



164 FAITHFULLY RECEIVING 

own, before the doors of the sanctuary are well 
closed behind them, begin to groan afresh under 
the weight, and calculate again the difficulties, 
and sinking under this new trial of their strength, 
are tempted to question the Almighty, why he 
has failed to lighten it? He never proposed to 
lighten it — he offered to take it from you, and 
carry it himself, but you refused to leave it; and 
you mean to resume to-morrow your week-day 
cares, What shall I eat, and what shall I drink, 
and wherewithal shall I be clothed; pull down 
the barns and build greater; bring in provisions 
for the days to come; look to the door, for the 
thief is coming; look to the moth, for the gar- 
ment waxeth old; between the hope of getting, 
and the fear of losing, not a moment of time is 
there to recollect that you made these cares over 
to your heavenly Father, and received a promise 
in return of all things needful for you. We re- 
member! — But did he exactly mean, we were 
to take no thought, to be careful for nothing? — 
Yes, he meant it, but you did not: you never 
meant to try if he would keep his word. If it 
be answered that this earthliness and careful- 
ness of spirit was the very sickness of which we 
desire to be healed, the symptoms of our disease 
cannot be urged against us, as a reason why we 
do not recover, although they be mournful evi- 
dences of the fact. This may be true, and often 
is true, when, wearied and ashamed of its anx- 
ieties, the soul commits itself to God for strength 



THE SACRAMENT. 165 

against such infirmities. But then, has our 
acting, after the Sacrament, been as honest as 
our desire before it, and our petitions in it? Have 
we followed, or even honestly and truly meant 
to follow the direction of the physician for the 
subduing of this soul-consuming sickness? Some 
of his precepts will readily occur. " Be content 
with such things as ye have — covet not uncer- 
tain riches — study to be quiet and do your own 
business — the servant of the Lord must not 
strive — seekest thou high things for thyself, seek 
them not — make not provision for the flesh to 
fulfil the lusts thereof — ye ask and receive not, 
because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it 
on your lusts." Are those whose spiritual 
growth is stayed by earthly care and their pray- 
ers for peace unanswered, not seeking more of 
earth than God has promised, more than isneed- 
f ul — not meddling more with earth than their 
lawful business requires, more than is whole- 
some — not mingling, more than duty and hu- 
manity require, in the great strife of this world's 
pride and policy? Alas! who can medicate for 
soul or body, if the patient will dwell in an un- 
wholesome atmosphere, and eat pernicious food? 
Before we complain of want of enjoyment or 
want of efficacy in these sacred mysteries, we 
must examine ourselves what we do, or mean 
to do, to counteract their blessed influences. 

Those likewise who bring their sorrows to be 
healed and solaced at the altar; although in 
15* 



166 FAITHFULLY RECEIVING 

some sense they are the most honest suppliants, 
for nature loves not sorrow; yet sorrow is a re- 
bellious thing, and often wants the sanctity of 
submission; and then it is so hard for man to 
judge in this case between the complaint and 
the process of its cure. Some secret sin, some 
indulged corruption, or habit adverse to the 
mind of God, may have produced the painful 
dispensation. The physician may know the 
sorrow is the medicine, not the disease, nor to 
be intermitted on the first appearance of recovery; 
the patient knows nothing of all this, and like a 
sick child, resists the draught, mourns that he is 
not comforted in prayer, when, if he would only 
listen he would hear the tender father's most 
persuasive voice — " My son, depise not thou the 
chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art 
rebuked of him." Go and examine what it is 
delays your consolation, that as yet your prayers 
prevail not to remove his hand; perhaps it will 
be whispered to you in this study of yourself, 
Give up that questionable practice, resist that 
natural propensity, be humbled for that infirmity, 
or repair that wrong, then will it be safe to close 
the wound and remove this sorrow from you. 

More than all these, perhaps, the wonder 
seems that they who come to the altar for 
blessings purely spiritual, for the strengthening 
of their faith, the increase of their love, and the 
subjugation of their sins, do so often go 
away unsatisfied and unassured of benefits re- 



THE SACRAMENT. 167 

ceived. Most commonly, I believe, this case is 
one before alluded to; we really have received 
the things we sought, but have not faith at the 
time to realise the grant: the excited hope that 
cheered us to the effort went out, or was put out 
by the enemy at the altar, and we have come 
away in mournful unconsciousness of the blessing 
poured out upon us. If so, let us wait — ■" The 
husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of 
the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he 
receive the early and the latter rain; — be ye 
also patient; stablish your hearts." At the be- 
ginning of Daniel's prayer, the commandment 
came forth, though it was long before it reached 
the earth. Abraham did not receive the child 
of promise till it became in the natural course 
impossible. God does take time for every thing: 
He took time to make the world, and time to 
redeem it; and still he takes time to convert and 
sanctify every separate soul whom he designs 
for glory. It seems long — " but he that believ- 
eth shall not make haste." What is time to one 
who has all eternity to be blessed in, and only as 
it were a throb of pain, or breathing of desire, 
to fill up the brief interval? Hope against hope 
— believe against experience — believe that ye 
receive grace and strength, although your hand 
seems empty and your bosom void. In pre- 
sence of the enemy, Israel sang the praises of 
the Lord; and when they began to sing and 
praise, the enemy was smitten. 



168 FAITHFULLY RECEIVING 

But, there is a reverse of this conclusion; 
there is a possible and too probable forfeiture 
on our part of even the spiritual benefits in- 
tended for us in the Sacrament, by the means 
we use to counteract them. For why are God's 
promises of peace and joy so great, and the be- 
liever's realisation of them so comparatively 
little; but because we do not act rationally in 
furtherance of our best desires? Perhaps while 
we are earnestly praying for the subjugation of 
some particular sin, we go needlessly to the 
scenes most likely to excite it — while we im- 
plore strength against the assaults of Satan, 
we go to meet him where we know his seat is. 
We ask more faith, and forthwith indulge in 
conversation or reading calculated to obscure 
the little that we have. We desire earnestly to 
grow in grace: and thence proceed to put our- 
selves under the most unfavorable influences, 
or deprive ourselves of the most ordinary means. 
We plant our vines on the cold side of the hill, 
and wonder that they yield us no rich juices — 
we scatter our corn upon the common field, and 
wonder to find it trodden under foot — we leave 
our fires unstirred and our lamps untrimmed, 
and complain that we sit in darkness and derive 
no warmth. This do we — not perhaps in things 
sinful in themselves, and directly forbidden by 
the word of God, but in things inexpedient 
by reason of the influence they have upon 
our spiritual health, and the divine life within 



THE SACRAMENT. 169 

us; especially upon our present enjoyment of 
it. 

Few of us know perhaps what exquisite de- 
light we throw away by this idle tampering 
with our blessings, and it is the more difficult to 
know, because no common rules can be laid 
down that apply to every character alike. 
What is the harm of this? and what is the use 
of that? are every-day questions; and there is 
often no answer to be given but this — the harm 
is the harm it does us; the use is the good 
we get by it: either difficult to estimate for 
another, because the influences are so variable 
upon different minds. One need not take 
another's medicine, or observe another's regi- 
men, though all must agree to shun the labelled 
poisons constantly presented to us in the world; 
nevertheless, a single eye will gather light 
enough from experience, to avoid what is in- 
jurious and choose what is influentially as well 
as essentially good; and God vouchsafes to our 
simplicity the guidance he refuses to our fro- 
wardness. 

Then let every faithful communicant be aware, 
that when we leave the Master's table, laden 
with the rich gifts and treasures of his love, there 
are watchers at the door to take them from us. 
The babblers and banterers are there, to make 
us forget their value, and let them go. The 
arguers and disputants are there, to offer us some 
counterfeit in exchange: besides that watchful 



170 FAITHFULLY RECEIVING 

enemy who waits but an unguarded moment to 
purloin them. These cannot altogether prevail 
to snatch us out of our Redeemer's hand; but 
they can, and they do prevail to snatch his 
blessings out of ours. But take those blessings 
home; go privily and cautiously, and count them 
up and dwell upon them, and pray over them, 
and store them in the inner chambers of your 
soul, that you may return to them from your 
week-day occupations, and find them bright and 
precious as you received them. The Christian's 
intensest feelings will scarcely bear the world's 
unhallowed light. The near communion which 
the soul sometimes holds with God in Christ, 
nowhere perhaps nearer than in this communion 
of his body and blood, is so wordless and incom- 
municable a thing, that any attempt to give a 
voice or a name to it, seems to endanger our 
sense of its reality. It is so near to possession, 
that it is not hope — so near to sight, that it is 
scarcely faith. For if we should say at such a 
time " I believe," it would not be the just ex- 
pression of our minds. " I see, I know, I feel, 
the presence, and the power, and the love of my 
Redeemer-God; I talk with him, I hear him;" 
these would seem fitter words; but these would 
not be right ones; because to see, to hear, to 
speak, are impressions of things external; and 
seem to put mortal and corporeal senses between 
the intimacy of spirit with spirit, the nearness of 
the soul to Him who dwells in it, and in whom 



THE SACRAMENT. 171 

it dwells. Besides that our senses may deceive 
us — the sight, the sound, the speech, may be 
delusion; it is something far more sure than 
these. I believe that, for a brief duration, it is 
the very similitude of that state in which the 
sister lamps of faith and hope go out, and love 
burns on alone. The believer cannot fix this 
glimpse of heaven to keep it always visible 
through the strife of time. But he can keep the 
impression of what he has seen, and call to mind 
its proved reality, and dwell upon the time — for 
he knows it — when this enjoyment of God shall 
be his own for ever. I do not think he can well 
submit to earthly gaze this joy, with which a 
stranger intermeddleth not. Among Christ's 
living members there may be a sign, but for the 
most part these are the secret things of a man, 
that belong to God. 

The near communion which the redeemed 
enjoy, when their union with the Redeemer can 
be fully realised, being so far incommunicable, 
that description would seem inadequate to those 
who are sensible partakers of this hidden life ; 
and to those who are not, can scarcely convey- 
so much meaning as might persuade them of 
enjoyments in religion unattained, and yet with- 
in their reach; for the most part I think there is 
a better way. The man who has grown rich in 
money, does not call his neighbors and friends 
together to exhibit his bonds and securities; he 
invites them to his table and brings them to his 



172 FAITHFULLY RECEIVING 

house, and they perceive by his expenditure, the 
change in his condition. Has the Christian no 
way but words, to show how rich he is, how 
blest he is? When we come from the altar laden 
with rich grants of spiritual blessings, comforted, 
established, reassured, it should be with us even 
as when the face of Moses shone with the bright- 
ness of the glory of the holy place. Peace is 
too rare a thing in this tumultuous world, to 
pass unnoticed; and there is the stamp of hea- 
ven so plain upon it, that Satan has been baffled 
to devise a counterfeit. And as we do not ac- 
count that man the most assuredly rich, who 
spreads his table profusely, and tricks his house 
out gaily, and dresses himself superbly once a 
year; but rather him who has the appendages 
of affluence always round him; so I think the 
believer's possession of God, is not so much 
manifested on occasions, by gifts of prayer, and 
fervency of discourse, and efforts of self-negation, 
and extraordinary acts of faith, however these, 
when called for, do manifest the great power of 
the Spirit in us to the glory of God. They are 
not, I think, so sure an indication of his spiritual 
growth, as that habitual plenitude which marks 
the abiding of the same Spirit in us — the enjoy- 
ment in God of whatever he bestows; the resig- 
nation to him of whatever he withdraws; praise 
for what we have, and confiding prayer for 
what we want, and that freeness and composed- 
ness of spirit, which none but the secure and 



THE SACRAMENT. 173 

happy feel, and no sinning dying creature can 
feel, separate from Christ. 

With all our caution to beware that no man 
take our crown, God's gift of himself is not a 
miser's treasure, to be buried for safety in the 
earth. We are to wear it, and to spend it in 
the sight of all men: "that they, seeing our 
good works, may glorify our Father which is in 
heaven." If we be rich in God, it may be seen 
by the little need we have of other possessions. 
If we be happy in God, it may be manifested 
in our daily enjoyment of him, in cheerfulness 
and contentedness of spirit, without the stimu- 
lants of adventitious pleasures. If we be safe 
in God, it may be seen in the absence of all 
anxious, carking cares and apprehensions of the 
time to come. All may be seen in a life of 
willing obedience to his word, " walking hence- 
forth in his holy ways." Such an expenditure 
communicates our wealth to all around us, and 
when men behold it, they will inquire how we 
came to be so rich; perhaps be persuaded to 
seek treasure in the Lord. 

The ungodly world is ever as Jesus found it: 
" We have piped unto you, and ye have not 
danced: we have mourned unto you, and ye 
have not wept:" — offended at one time by what 
they call the gloom of religion, its abstinence 
from forbidden pleasures — they affect at other 
times to doubt the believer's pretension to a 
higher happiness, because he seems to enjoy 
16 



174 



FAITHFULLY RECEIVING, &C. 



life as much as others; — the delights of nature, 
the gifts of Providence, the pursuits of science, 
the exercise of our faculties, and the gratifica- 
tion of our tastes and feelings — in short they do 
not see that Christians want relish for any thing 
that is good. Oh, if they could see what lies 
beyond their search, they would find it not only 
so, but that the Christian is the only one who 
tastes the zest of any thing, for God himself is 
the zest of all his gifts. The food we eat, the 
green turf we tread upon, the fresh breeze that 
blows upon our bodies, and invigorates our 
limbs, and nature's gay coloring that delights 
our eyes — God's universal boon: and those 
more special grants, the feasted intellect, [and 
satisfied affection, and all that superfluity, that 
prodigality of good, with which an indulgent 
Father gratifies even the least preferences of 
his children: who knows them — who feels them 
— who estimates them as the Christian does, 
when he enjoys his Maker's [presence in them? 
It is the condemnation of the world, that God 
is not in all their thoughts; not to detach those 
thoughts from any legitimate pursuit, or with- 
hold them from any innocent delight; but God, 
the life as well as the source of all, is to be 
sought in every pursuit, and enjoyed in every 
delight, himself at once the giver and the gift: 
as He hereafter shall be all in all, not in the 
waste of annihilated being, but in the fulness of 
all being, possessed and enjoyed in Him. 



175 



CHAPTER X. 

OP YOUNG PERSONS WHO RECEIVE THE SACRA- 
MENT FOR THE FIRST TIME AFTER CONFIR- 
MATION. 

Our church has determined " that there shall 
none be admitted to the Holy Communion, 
until such time as he be confirmed, or be ready 
and desirous to be confirmed :" a strong refu- 
tation, I think, of the arguments drawn from 
the wording of some of her formularies, to 
prove that the church considers every baptized 
child to be really and spiritually regenerate, 
and born anew of the Holy Spirit. If this were 
to be taken for granted, the so-made child of 
God is entitled to be considered a member of 
Christ's mystical body, and to be a partaker of his 
flesh and blood, without any further examina- 
tion or evidence of his claims. The determina- 
tion of the church is otherwise. Dedicated by 
the parent's faith and desire, to God, and 
pledged to his service in the sponsor's hopes 
and prayers, the church receives to her out- 
ward privileges, and all the benefit of her in- 
struction and her prayers, the unconscious 
infant; assuming as she does throughout her 
forms, but not deciding upon, the validity of the 



176 ON RECEIVING THE SACRAMENT 

contract between the soul and God — the inward 
and spiritual grace signified, but not inherent in 
the outward and visible sign. On children so 
baptized the church pronounces it " certain by 
the word of God, that dying before they com- 
mit actual sin, they are undoubtedly saved/ 5 
Not, I conceive, because they are baptized, for 
that would make the church their Saviour: not 
because of their parent's faith, for that would 
make a Saviour of the parents, and would be- 
sides invalidite the baptism of many, on behalf 
of whom no such faith has been exercised; nei- 
ther, I believe, because the Holy Ghost is then 
necessarily received; but because in the view 
which the church takes of general redemption, " 
the one perfect and sufficient satisfaction and 
oblation for the sins of the whole world, the 
death of Christ, has removed the penalty of 
original sin, derived from Adam; the only 
charge that could be laid on an unconscious 
child, before the age of moral responsibility. 
To exhibit this truth, and to confirm it to the 
glory of God, and the great consolation of a 
parent who loses a child in infancy, I should 
consider to be one of the primary objects of 
infant baptism. If Jesus takes our dedicated 
one before it has been soiled with wilful sin, or 
stamped with the guilt of unbelief, he surely 
takes his own. If not, whatever the Church 
has pronounced, on the assumption that the 
outward profession has been accompanied by 



AFTER CONFIRMATION. 177 

the inward and spiritual grace, she attaches no 
such certainty of acceptance with God, as would 
entitle the baptised to the more exclusive cere- 
mony of the Lord's Supper, reserved and 
restricted to the faithfnl, to them that actually, 
not ceremonially, and by the faith of another, 
do truly repent them of their sins, and believe 
the promises of God in Jesus Christ. If, in 
stating my own views, I misrepresent those of 
the church, I do so without design; but I think 
this interposition of the rite of confirmation 
between the baptism in which the child is 
assumed to be made a child of God, and the 
communion of the Lord's Supper, in which he 
is accepted as such, is a strong testimony that 
the church does not decide upon the efficacy of 
the first administration. Like many worldly 
contracts, which, however solemn and binding 
on the conscience, and however confidently 
relied upon, can have no legal validity, till the 
contracting party is of age; the solemnly-taken 
covenant of baptism; waits the signature of the 
matured and instructed proselyte, before it is 
received in evidence of a Christian profession. 
The pious parent's hopes, meantime, are in 
abeyance, upheld by a far surer ground of con- 
fidence than this incomplete transaction, the 
faithful promise of God, of a divine blessing 
upon their instruction, their example, and their 
prayers; till the child having incurred the pe- 
nalty of actual and personal transgression, is 
16* 



178 ON RECEIVING THE SACRAMENT 

capable by faith, and repentance, and applica- 
tion of the blood of Christ, to ratify and perform 
his part of the contract; as by devoting and 
bringing him up to God, the parents have 
alredy performed theirs. 

To this intent the rite of confirmation has 
been established: a brief and beautiful service, 
which supposes the previous examination of 
every candidate and satisfaction received, as far 
as profession can give it, that he is indeed born 
anew of the Spirit, and a living member of the 
body of Christ, meet to sit down at the table 
of the faithful. Such examination made and 
attested by those who ought to be most compe- 
tent r^udge — as he Jeper of id was admitted 
to the congregation when by certain divinely-or- 
dained tests the priests pronounced him clean — 
so the church does again, as we have observed 
her to do throughout, accept the profession of 
which God alone can judge; and with the on- 
laid hand of blessing, pronounces their souls re- 
generat and their ins forgiven; prays for a 
continuance of the grace and increase of the 
divine life assumed to be received; and can at 
no time after, I believe, except by occasion of 
gross and outward transgression, refuse the com- 
munion, or claim to re-examine the communi- 
cant. Impressed as I am with the excellent 
wisdom and fitness of this whole arrangement, 
I cannot but be impressed also with the careless 
and inadequate manner with which the pur- 



AFTER CONFIRMATION. 179 

pose of the church has come to be executed. 
Whether from the persuasion that the actual 
assumption of the Christian profession takes 
place in baptism, without the consent or know- 
ledge of the professor, and contrary to all sub- 
sequent experience, or from the belief that it 
cannot be verified by any form at all, confirma- 
tion has come to be treated very lightly, as 
something indifferent, to be done or let alone. 
To me, I confess, the letting alone seems less 
objectionable than the so doing: for the church 
itself does not consider the act indispensable, 
provided the person is ready and desirous to 
perform it, should occasion serve: whereas in 
the actual performance as usually effected, there 
is neither readiness nor desire : the parent per- 
forms the baptismal proxy over again, directs 
the child when to be confirmed; and with some 
better understanding, perhaps, of the nature of 
the engagement, it remains just as little volun- 
tary as it was before. I fear I may cross the 
opinions of the pious, as well as the practice of 
the careless, in expressing my views upon this 
subject; but considering confirmation as in a 
manner the completion of the baptismal cere- 
mony, I think it ought in nowise to be per- 
formed, until the young person is seriously de- 
termined to take upon himself the baptismal 
engagement, and enter into covenant with God 
in Jesus Christ: until they are believed to have, 
and believe themselves to have, not by their 



180 ON RECEIVING THE SACRAMENT 

sureties but in themselves, what is required of 
them that come to be baptised — " Repentance, 
whereby they forsake sin; and faith, whereby 
they stedfastly believe the promises of God 
made to them in that sacrament." The case is 
not now what it was before: the church can no 
longer assume that the baptised child may die; 
and without repentance for the sin it has been 
incapable of committing, or faith in Him whom 
it has been incapable of knowing, be admitted 
to the benefits of a free salvation. The candi- 
date for confirmation appears in the visible 
likeness of the fallen Adam, the possessed in- 
heritor of Adam's sin — in a position, therefore, 
in which, without faith and repentance, he has 
no right to suppose himself, or be by us sup- 
posed, the subject of salvation; nor can be called 
upon to assert it on the authority of others: 
still less be pronounced by faith and hope 
an elect-member of the church of Christ: his 
calling and election can only now be made 
sure by the manifestation of divine life within. 
Before the infant eye is capable of distinguishing 
objects or indicating its notice of them, the mo- 
ther believes and hopes her babe will have its 
eye-sight; but the time comes when she can only 
know it by the manifest exercise of the visual 
powers. So in the spiritual life of her offspring, 
she may hope and believe, and if her babe dies 
be assured of it — " For of such is the kingdom 
of heaven." If it lives, in faith she may still en- 



AFTER CONFIRMATION. 1S1 

joy the substance of things hoped-for, the evi- 
dence of things not seen: she may believe that 
God will at some time manifest his blessing on 
her care, and his acceptance of her prayers, by 
imparting his life-giving Spirit to her child. 
Most firmly I believe he will do so — not because 
He has said — " Whosoever is baptised shall be 
saved ;" — for He has never said it; — but be- 
cause he has said, " Bring up a child in the way 
that it should go, and when it is old it will not 
depart from it." But to persist in thinking that 
her offspring has been so made alive, and teach- 
ing it so to believe, when not a symptom of spi- 
ritual vitality appears, is to my mind, on the 
part of the parent a most awful presumption, 
and to the child a most ruinous delusion : mak- 
ing of none effect or value the whole testimony 
of Scripture, which requires that the tree be 
known by its fruit, and admits no testimony of 
of a justified state, but the work of the Holy 
Spirit in the heart. 

While the child is yet uninstructed and irre- 
sponsible, it is the parent, not the child, that 
fulfils the baptismal engagement — fulfils on its 
behalf w T hat on its behalf they have undertaken; 
by allowing nothing that is contrary to the vow, 
and enforcing such habits, and instilling such 
precepts as are in exact conformity with it. As 
the child becomes capable of understanding the 
will of God, and the method of salvation, its own 
duties and responsibilities are unfolded and en- 



182 ON RECEIVING THE SACRAMENT 

forced; not because it has made an engagement 
to that effect, which the child will very early 
discover to be a fiction, but because it is a divine 
and universal obligation to believe and obey the 
Gospel. As long and to the extent that the 
young person's actions continue to be under pa- 
rental control, I think the parents continue bound 
by the utmost extent of the vow — not because 
the child has taken it, but because they have. — 
If I tell my daughter that I cannot indulge her 
in worldly pomps and pleasures, because she 
has promised to renounce them, it is no argu- 
ment, and she perceives the fallacy: she knows 
she has not done so, and perhaps is not determi- 
ned that she ever will. If I tell her on the con- 
trary that these things are contrary to my own 
profession as a child of God, and to my engage- 
ment to bring her up in the paths of godliness, 
and therefore, cannot be consented to whilst I 
have the right to control her actions, she is com- 
petent to appreciate the argument, as founded 
on truth and candor. 

How early young people are capable of taking 
the engagement upon themselves, and volunta- 
rily entering upon a life of faith, I feel it impos- 
sible to decide. The seeds of divine life some- 
times spring up so very early, that the age at 
which it is possible for a child to be ready and 
desirous to be confirmed, cannot be taken for 
that at which it may commonly be expected. I 
do not wish to prescribe an age; but I should 



AFTER CONFIRMATION. 183 

think generally that confirmation in our church 
takes place too soon. I confine this observation 
to our own church, because I am not informed 
at what age the Presbyterian and dissenting 
churches examine their young people prepara- 
tory to their admission to the communion. I 
take it for granted that some such public profes- 
sion is required in every Christian community; 
and whatever it be that stands in the place of our 
act of confirmation, I consider it in the same 
light: it is not the form that signifies, it is the 
intention; it is that, whatever it be, by which, 
as for as human insight can, the communion is 
guarded from the intrusion of the unconverted. 
I can only say for myself, that whatever be the 
practice of our own or other communities, I could 
not, as a parent, a guardian, or a sponsor, bring 
a child to be confirmed till it manifested a volun- 
tary, well-considered, and well-instructed desire, 
to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and to fight 
under his banner against the world, the flesh, 
and the devil, and to continue Christ's faithful 
soldier and servant unto his life's end: or what- 
ever form of profession to the same effect any 
church communion may prescribe. 

The form of confirmation is very simple and 
very explicit; and with the same tenderness for 
the weak and ill-assured that pervades our whole 
ritual, the demand upon the candidate is so very 
moderate, that it need not falter the most timid 
and conscientious replicant, provided he be in- 



184 ON RECEIVING THE SACRAMENT 

deed of the miud to take these vows upon him. 
Nothing is asked of what has heretofore been 
done — nothing is said of broken vows and bap- 
tismal promises unkept. I must again remark, 
that the candidate for confirmation is not ad- 
dressed on his actual adoption into the family of 
God, reminded of his previous responsibility as 
a child of God, or confessed or prayed for as a 
transgressor of a covenant, assumed to have 
been made by him in baptism; all which I 
should have expected, had the church taken the 
view of that Sacrament which some persons in- 
culcate. " Children being come to years of dis- 
cretion," and fully instructed in all the Chris- 
tian faith, " having learned what their godfathers 
and godmothers promised for them in baptism," 
and being supposed to understand the nature of 
repentance, whereby they forsake sin, and faith 
whereby they receive the promises of God made 
to them in that Sacrament, are called upon to 
say before God and that congregation, whether 
they will ratify and confirm the engagements 
made for them, and do consider themselves 
bound to believe and to do the things therein 
specified, and will by the grace of God endeavor 
faithfully to observe tnem. On the part of the 
young proselyte, the ceremony ends with this: 
the remainder of the performance is the prayer 
of the church on their behalf, and her assurance, 
not theirs, that in so confessing their obligation 
and desiring to fulfil it, they are influenced by 



AFTER CONFIRMATION. 185 

the Holy Spirit, accepted of the Father, and re- 
ceived into the faith of Christ. The category- 
proceeds no farther; the pledge is taken for no 
more; the young confessor is not called upon to 
say that he has repented and believed; has 
washed himself in the fountain opened for sin 
and for uncleanness, or received forgiveness of 
his sins, and the earnest of the Spirit in his soul. 
This would be too mueh to say, because on their 
young experience and indistinct self-knowledge, 
it is more than they can generally know. Self- 
knowledge is the acquisition of maturer years — 
the latest growth of intellect and the autumn 
fruit of grace. In very youug persons whom 
God prepares for an early removal to glory, the 
most perfect and vivid experience and enjoy- 
ment of the life in Christ is sometimes manifest- 
ed, a realised hope so unmixed and unpertur- 
bed, that one might fancy the great enemy had 
seen them cradled from their birth in the pa- 
noply of heaven, and never ventured to lay his 
hand upon them. But these are not creatures 
of the earth, or long to remain upon it. Gene- 
rally, so far from soliciting, I could scarcely 
welcome in young people a precocious confi- 
dence of their own calling and election in Jesus 
Christ. I should think hope a better blossom 
than assurance, and desire a safer evidence than 
experience. Not because the youngest, even 
the infant member of Christ is less safely and 
eternally united to him than the most matured 
17 



186 ON RECEIVING THE SACRAMENT 

saint; but because it is a time when feelings 
are so liable to take the form of principles, and 
the perceptions have so much the advance of 
the understanding, the most artless mind is 
only the most exposed to self-deception. Again, 
therefore, I would bear testimony to the wis- 
dom and moderation of the church in requiring 
no profession or promise, from the candidate for 
confirmation, but such as at the appointed age 
instructed youth is fully competent to make: 
namely, whether they consider themselves 
bound to do and believe the things in which 
they have been instructed, and by the grace of 
God will evermore endeavor faithfully to ob- 
serve that, which by their own mouth and con- 
sent they acknowledge that they ought to do: 
the first developement of living faith — assent to 
the truth of the Gospel, and determination to 
obey it. This profession solemnly and publicly 
made, and every means used on the part of the 
minister and other spiritual instructors to ascer- 
tain its sincerity, the church admits the confessor 
to the exclusive privilege of the faithful — the 
most holy communion of the body and blood of 
our Saviour Christ: and it is generally expected 
that they should appear at the table on the 
earliest opportunity subsequent to confirmation. 
All is thus done that can be done by others: 
and most deep, and serious, and entire becomes 
now the responsibility of the young Christian — 
" To examine themselves whether they repent 



AFTER CONFIRMATION. 187 

them truly of their former sins, stedfastly pur- 
posing to lead a new life; have a lively faith in 
God's mercy through Christ, with a thankful 
remembrance of his death, and are in love and 
charity with all men." 

u I am the true vine," says the Lord, u and 
my Father is the husbandman. Every branch 
in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: 
and every branch in me that beareth fruit, he 
purgeth it that it may bring forth more fruit." 
In vain the church's blessing and assurance, the 
sponsor's faith and parent's anxious cares; in 
vain the water sprinkled, the precious emblems 
taken and received; if this engrafted bud be- 
come not a living, growing and fruit-bearing 
branch of that life-giving, life-sustaining stem. 
True, the Father is a patient husbandman. 
He does not look to gather of his vintage in the 
spring time, or cull his grapes before the flower 
is set: but He is skilful too, and knows the 
first germinating promise of the future fruit, 
and sees if it is not there. We need not fear 
to carry the figure on, for it is his own chosen 
imagery, exhibiting by things familiar to the 
simplest and the youngest, the most mysterious 
secrets of his truth. Have we not seen the 
carefully-tended plant, trained and watered and 
cultured day by day; and watched some branch 
of it that never buds: that keeps its wintry 
aspect all the year: and though to sight 
attached to the vigorous root, it draws no nour- 



188 ON RECEIVING THE SACRAMENT 

ishment from it, and puts forth no leaves to 
grace it, and remains an ugly and distorted 
thing, only to disfigure the fair plant. And 
have we not seen other off-sets of a sickly 
growth — full of leaves, and useless wild lux- 
uriance, pretty in spring, but an incumbrance 
as the time of fruit approaches, of which it 
gives no promise. Attached are these also to 
the source of life and nourishment, and have 
derived some measure of succor from it; but 
nothing of its fruit-producing life and vigor. 
Yes, and we know what comes of them — what 
must come of them, when the primer's knife 
approaches: they must not stay to shame the 
culture and to spoil the tree. God is indeed a 
patient husbandman: he does not his work as 
men do: He comes round many and many a 
year, and watches these young scions of his 
confessing church, to see if they be indeed its 
believing, repenting and obedient members. 
And why so often? " He knows them that are 
his" — and did know from all eternity who they 
were; but this is not the way he works. He 
suffers them to be engrafted — he allows them 
to remain — he lets them take and renew their 
baptismal vows — lets them come month by 
month and sit among the faithful at his feast. 
He does much more than this: for meantime 
his rains descend and his dews to water the 
earth, and many a summer's sun shines out 
upon these branches. He pours into the 



AFTER CONFIRMATION. 1S9 

young ear the persuasions of his love, and 
exhibits before their eyes the warnings of his 
anger. He compasses them, as it were, with 
an atmosphere of grace, in the prayers and 
preaching and ordinances of the church, into 
which they have been received. And then he 
waits — how long he waits! 

The most lifeless, the most graceless com- 
municant may gaze upon the emblems of 
redeeming love, and when he hears it said, 
" Which was shed for you" — " which was 
broken for you" — may be assured that to that 
body and blood he owes the suspensive mercy 
that fgives him time to repent and believe, to 
bring forth fruits meet for repentance, and to 
work the work of faith. But, " if a man abide 
not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is 
withered; and men gather them up and cast 
them into the fire, and they are burned." The 
pruning time must come. And here let the 
young ones pause; and let the new proselytes 
listen; and whether they be going to the sacra- 
ment unprepared, or have determined to re- 
main unprepared away, let them deeply con- 
sider their position. He who has a sum of 
money in possession, knows by his expenditure 
how much there is remaining; the simple pea- 
sant who notches days upon a stick, and cuts 
off the notches as another and another passes, 
can reckon how many he has left. But to you, 
the fewer gone are no imitation of the more 
17* 



190 ON RECEIVING THE SACRAMENT 

to come; the small expenditure no proof of 
wealth remaining; brief as the time may be, 
and few as the years may be that have been 
lost in godlessness and folly, you may not 
have as many remaining to redeem them. 
The off-casting of the worthless branch waits 
no fixed season; it must be when the health 
and beauty of the tree require it, and the 
wisdom of the husbandman so determines; 
perhaps when the unholy influence and ex- 
ample would become injurious to others; when 
the false profession or inconsistent life would 
bring disgrace upon religion, and shame the 
name of Christ. And this is not all. There 
are other risks than the uncertainty of life, and 
other dangers than untimely death. We know 
that the sudden tempest lays low the diseased 
and rotten tree, and scatters the dead branches 
on the ground, while it leaves uninjured and 
unmoved the firm and thriving ones. But have 
we not seen also when the long winter snows 
begin to melt, when the iron-hearted frost gives 
way, and we go round our borders to see what 
mischief has been done? We know which it 
is that we most surely miss. It is not those 
that had taken deep root and made a vigorous 
growth, before the winter came; they lift their 
scatheless heads to the returning sunshine, and 
seem to triumph in the desolation; the ruined 
ones are those that had a sickly and redundant 
growth, that were imperfectly rooted, attached 



AFTER CONFIRMATION. 191 

too feebly to the parent plant, or otherwise ill 
prepared to bide the blighting time. Yes; and 
I have seen the same amid the trials and sor- 
rows of the world. The very affliction which 
has brought light and life into the peni- 
tent soul, strengthened the faith, and confirmed 
the hope, and purified the character of the 
believer, making Christ thrice precious to him, 
and himself more like to Christ; I have seen 
the same affliction chill to death the ficti- 
tious excitements of religious feeling, the feeble 
stirrings of an awakened conscience. I have 
seen it turn the natural heart to stone, instead 
of breaking it into godly sorrow; and together 
with the withered sympathies and blighted pro- 
mise of young, untried existence, indifference 
has laid its icy hand upon the early yearnings 
of the soul towards God. I have observed it 
often in the poor and in the rich, and watched 
the declension of what seemed a religious dis- 
position, under the growing pressure of adver- 
sity, till the rootless promise has utterly died 
away. The closed Bible, the neglected church, 
the avoided counsellers — how well we know the 
first symptoms of revolt and disavowal; no 
leisure, no spirits, no resolution now to go with 
them that keep holiday before the Lord. And 
then there follows, with the poor, the neglected 
person, the slovenly house, the domestic dis- 
cord, dissolute habits, and disaffection to the 
laws. With the rich, habits of dissipation, 



192 ON RECEIVING THE SACRAMENT 

frivolity, and selfishness, to get rid of the 
poignancy of remaining feeling, or fill the 
void of sympathies extinguished. All this I 
have seen to grow out of unsanctified affliction, 
and disappointed earthliness; out of those very 
trials, which, acting upon a living faith, are the 
culture with which the watchful husbandman 
purges the branches that they may bring forth 
more fruit. They used to hear the gospel; 
they used to come to the sacrament; they used 
to pray in their families, and keep strict the 
Sabbath. What has happened? Oh, the 
blighting time has come, and they have 
withered away, because they had no root. And 
if the winter had spared them, there had come 
the drought and heats of summer. Prosperity 
is thought to be more dangerous than adver- 
sity; and so it is, in so far that while adversity 
pursues us, it may be hoped it is the pruner's 
knife to purify and invigorate the branches; 
whereas unsanctified prosperity is the known 
wages of the wicked one; but if that hope 
prove fallacious, I know not whether prosperity 
or adversity has the more hardening influence 
on the heart of the impenitent; if the happy 
forget God, the miserable defy him. Oh could 
the young disciple but be persuaded what he 
risks by hesitating, how soon the soft emotions 
of his soul may die away; how soon the sacred 
influences and opportunities may be withdrawn; 
how the touching incidents of Jesus' dying love 



AFTER CONFIRMATION. 193 

will become stale and wearisome as an oft-told 
tale; till they listen with indifference, or listen 
not at all, to the entreaties of the blessed Lord, 
who waits even now without, while they delay 
to open. Then if it should be, as it may not 
be, that they live out the common term of 
life, it will be only to fill up the measure of their 
sin, and the vial of wrath to be poured out upon 
them. " Now is the accepted time, now is the 
day of salvation. " " All things are ready, 
come ye to the supper/' There never can be 
a time when all is so ready, so suitable, so in- 
viting. The church has taught you, prayed for 
you, blessed you, expects you. Your under- 
standing has been enlightened, and your heart 
affected, and your conscience moved, to acknow- 
ledge the claims of God upon you, and all the 
workings of his mercy towards you. And He 
— if there can be supposed a time when the gift 
of a heart is more acceptable to him than at any 
other, it is, it must be before that heart is seven- 
times dyed with habits of corruption; is used 
and worn, and indurated in a baser service. 

Yes, if there is a time above every time when 
Jesus is ready, it is now. Go up to his feast — 
Go while your heart is warm, and your impres- 
sions fresh, and your desires strong. Do not 
wait to be sure you shall not change your 
mind, shall not break your vows, and so incur 
the threatened condemnation. If you give not 
yourself to Christ, and keep not your mind to 



194 ON RECEIVING THE SACRAMENT 

follow him, you are perjured already, and con- 
demned already; for you have taken upon you 
the most solemn obligation so to do. Go as 
you are — go with what you have — take your 
untried affections, your vacillating desires, your 
scarcely formed resolutions — lay them upon his 
altar, and tell him it is all you have. Remem- 
ber the two mites that only made a farthing — 
but she had no more, and so they were enough . 
You know not yet how little that blessed mas- 
ter will accept from those who do what they 
can: — how small the grain of mustard-seed is 
which he acknowledges, and blesses the future 
germ of faith; and sets himself, loving and 
tender and most faithful husbandman, to nur- 
ture, and cherish, and protect the feeble thing; 
nay, does become himself its life, indissoluble, 
indestructible, eternal. Go up, and say to him 
that you do not know if it be so with you or 
not, but that you wish it were: you are not 
sure if you will give yourself to him, but you 
wish that he would take you. Entreat him to 
it by his body and blood that will be exhibited 
before you in a figure; by his cross and passion 
that you will celebrate; by the anguish of his 
soul on that last evening ; by the sympathies of 
his manhood at that last supper ; by the power 
of his godhead now upon the throne, beseech 
him, and beseech the Father through him, and 
for these things' sake; and beseech him to be- 
seech the Father too, that you go not empty 



AFTER CONFIRMATION. 195 

away, that you return not as ignorant, as unde- 
cided, as uncertain of your own disposition as 
you came: that you may know indeed, and feel 
indeed, and manifest before all men, the grow- 
ing, acting, fructifying vitality of that faith, into 
which you were baptized, and by your own 
choice professed. If he hear you, and when did 
he not hear, though it was but a believing sigh, 
I cannot tell you what you will have gained. 
It was easy to tell you what you risked, by de- 
laying to devote yourself to God; but I cannot 
— for I have not learned it all, and what I know, 
I have not language to communicate — I cannot 
tell you all that you will gain by this early de- 
votion of yourself to God, and immediate en- 
trance on the path of life. Some sacrifices, it is 
true, there are to make, but they are far less 
now, than they will be by and by. It is not so 
hard to leave a stranger, whom we have but 
just now made acquaintance with, as a long 
familiar, fascinating friend. You know it is not 
so hard to leave a place, however charming, 
where you have passed but a single night, as 
one in which you have made yourself a home, 
and become attached to everything around you. 
If any body tells you that by becoming religious, 
and separating from the world when young, you 
make a greater sacrifice, and relinquish a greater 
enjoyment than if you partake of its pleasures 
till you are tired-, and give yourself to God when 
the delights of youth and novelty are over, they 



196 ON RECEIVING THE SACRAMENT 

tell you falsely. The world has pleasures — for 
the worldly: sin has pleasures — for the sinful: 
but neither sin nor the world has any pleasures 
for the godly. Youth and a religious education 
may have prevented you hitherto from being, in 
respect of habit, either worldly or sinful; and if 
you renounce them now, those fictitious plea- 
sures will have no charm or attraction in your 
future life. Intoxication has its pleasures, as is 
sufficiently proved by the difficulty which is 
found in relinquishing it after frequent indulg- 
ence, and the ruin which men knowingly incur 
for the enjoyment of it. But do you think the 
youth who turns with disgust from the taste of 
spirits, loses an opportunity of enjoyment through 
his ignorance? no — you do not think so — 
and if you should see a young brother preparing 
to take the first spirituous draught, you would 
dash it from his lips, lest he should learn to love 
it. You may go into the world — we would not 
deceive you, and if you take your unregenerate 
nature with you, for every guilty pleasure that 
you find without, you will find a guilty taste 
within, and for every vanity a vain desire, and 
for every forbidden object a forbidden wish, and 
for every hurtful thing a hurtful lust: and they 
will all grow stronger on the food that suits 
them, and more importunate to renew the feast; 
till what is at first the zest of novelty, will pre- 
sently become the necessity of habit. Then, if 
by the grace of God, in recollection of your first 



AFTER CONFIRMATION. 197 

impressions, you return again to the point at 
which you now hesitate, and resolve to take up 
the profession of godliness you now refuse, 
mundane affections will so have wound their 
tortuous folds about you, there will be some tie 
to break, some sympathy to forego, some interest 
to sacrifice at every step — perhaps to pour a bit- 
ter into the sweetest offices of love, and bring 
even duty and conscience into perpetual collision; 
all which might have been avoided, had you 
formed your early associations where they will 
grow on to eternity, under the blessing of the 
Most High. Yea — fly them as you will, and 
make what sacrifices you can, there are those 
among your first associations that will come after 
you, pursue you to the sanctuary, kneel by you 
at the altar, shame you by their base companion- 
ship in presence of your Lord, and mingle pollu- 
tion with your purest joys. Be sure the images 
of by-gone sins will come; unholy thoughts, in- 
veterate habits, incautious language; not a day 
will pass, but the pure Spirit within you will be 
grieved, and your own peace disturbed, by the 
forcible entry of these sometime-encouraged in- 
mates of your bosom, till you cry out as St. Paul 
did, under a similar conflict, " wretched man 
that I am, who shall deliver me from the body 
of this death!" Thanks be to God through 
Jesus Christ, it can be done, and by his most 
gracious undertaking is done — but how much 
more pleasing is the task to him. how much less 
18 



198 ON RECEIVING THE SACRAMENT 

painful, and wearisome, and discouraging to the 
soul itself, before habit and indulgence have 
nursed into activity every indwelling sin; before 
the strong man armed has fortified his house by 
engaging every sentiment and taste and feeling 
on his side! 

But however pleasurable sin and folly are to 
the sinner and the fool, because they are the 
aliments suited to his nature, not so pleasurable, 
nor so suitable are they to him, as are the ways 
of godliness to the child of God. He who in- 
vites you into the family of his adopted, has an 
entertainment prepared for you suited to your 
new character, to the new man you are exhorted 
to put on. He does not bid you sacrifice this 
life to the next; He offers you the life that now 
is as well as that which is to come; sweets that 
will leave no bitterness upon the lip: joys that 
will instruct you of the joys of heaven — bless- 
ings that will prepare you for eternal blessed- 
ness. Happy indeed, if you will taste and see 
that he is gracious, before your appetite is utterly 
vitiated by longer feeding upon time and sense. 

We exhort you, then, to go — to go now to the 
Lord's table: not presumptuously, not inconsi- 
derately, not because you were baptized before 
you knew good or evil, or because you have 
recently been brought to the Bishop to be con- 
firmed: but because you desire in your heart to 
be accepted of him as a member of Christ, a 
child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom 



AFTER CONFIRMATION. 199 

of heaven; with all the distinctive characters 
that separate such a one from a world that lieth 
in wickedness, the children of the wicked one; 
because you desire, renouncing the pomps and 
vanities of the world, and the sinful lusts of the 
flesh, to put on the wedding garment prepared 
for you; to put on the Lord Jesus Christ— the 
robe of righteousness, the garment of salvation. 
We do not tell you first "to make your calling 
and election sure." You are called now — Jesus 
has sent for you — the church has fetched you — 
"the Spirit and the bride say, Come; and let 
him that heareth say, Come; and let him that is 
athirst come." We say to you "Choose ye this 
day whom ye will serve." If there be in you 
but a considerate choice, an honest desire, it 
came from God; it is his own good seed; when 
you present it to him He will know his own, 
and for his own sake will accept both it and you. 



MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 



is* 



203 



MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 



MEDITATIONS ON THE LORD'S PRAYER PREPARA- 
TORY TO THE COMMUNION. 

M AFTER THIS MANNER PRAY YE." — Matt vi, 9. 

Prayer has been called the breath of spiri- 
tual life; by its free and healthful exercise the 
vigor of the soul is both sustained and mani- 
fested: and by its cessation, that life would be 
at the least suspended and become insensible. 
To Him who penetrates beyond the words, if 
He needed such a disclosure, the tone of our 
prayers would exactly make known the con- 
dition of our hearts; and needless, to Him, they 
may be most useful to disclose it to ourselves. 
The church therefore has required, that before 
we be admitted to the communion, we be able 
to repeat the Lord's Prayer: a very small and 
simple requisition, as before men, who can but 
hear the words; but in its full bearing before 
Him who searches the heart and taught us so 
to express ourselves, it contains the full realisa- 
tion of the Gospel faith: and verily and indeed 



204 MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 

repeated, with an understanding mind, a con- 
senting will, and a beseeching heart, it contains 
all that is necessary to test our fitness for the 
holy communion of the body and blood of 
Christ. 

The question then comes home to me: am 
I able to repeat the Lord's prayer? "After 
this manner pray ye." The words are so very 
few, and so very simple, it would seem no very 
difficult thing, after this example, to frame 
acceptable prayer. It might be thought to 
discountenance the efforts that are made for 
long continuance of attention, and great fer- 
vency of expression in the out-pouring of our 
souls to God; but certainly presents no dis- 
couragement to the slow of heart and slow of 
speech, whose brief, and broken, and almost 
worldless prayers are their frequent grief and 
disquietude. The Lord's Prayer is a perfect 
contrast to all that we call fluency, the excited 
feeling, the exuberant vehemence, and mul- 
tiplied invocations which usually characterise 
all human compositions; yet, besides that, it is, 
as it must be, the most perfect example of 
acceptable and accepted service. What Chris- 
tian suppliant but has sometime felt, after 
continued efforts to pray, or prolonged atten- 
tion to the prayers of others, the force and 
power and sufficiency with which these words 
have come to our relief, and said for us in a 
few brief sentences, all that we have been vainly 



MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 205 

endeavoring to express. Many are the times 
we can recal, when after an hour, or half an 
hour's saying, or reading of prayers, we only 
began to pray when we came to this conclusion, 
" Who has taught and commanded us thus to 
pray/' 

"After this manner." I apprehend the in- 
tention of our Lord was not so much to leave 
us a prayer, as an example of prayer; a pattern 
by which to frame and methodize those suppli- 
cations which our various situations, feelings, 
and necessities would suggest. Few words 
and few desires; calm, direct, concentrated; 
the state of our hearts betrayed in our desires; 
faith rather exercised than professed; obedi- 
ence rather asked than promised; much meant, 
and little told, and nothing argued. Oh how 
simply and confidently, in this brief interview 
with the Father, the soul seems, as it were, to 
give itself up, and throw its whole concernment 
upon God. 

Can I then repeat the Lord's Prayer? If I 
can, I may fearlessly approach the table pre- 
pared by Jesus for the brethren of his Father's 
household, for whom it was intended, and to 
whom alone adapted. I need not be deterred 
or distressed, because my heart does not under- 
stand its own emotions, cannot explain its own 
necessities, or connect its wishes, or prolong its 
intercessions. What I call my worst prayers — 
hasty, disjointed, interrupted — are more like 



206 MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 

this, perhaps, than some that I am better 
pleased with. Peter said little when he was 
afraid of sinking; when he wept bitterly at the 
denial of his master, he probabiy said nothing: 
and few prayers were briefer than his, who it 
is probable never said but one, and asked all, 
and received all in that single grant — " Lord, 
remember me." No supplications, perhaps, are 
so powerful with God, so true, so real, as those 
which in a beating, breaking heart, the Holy 
Spirit makes, with groanings that cannot be 
uttered; that heart scarce knowing if it prays 
or not, but only that it would pray if it could, 
and must break if it be not heard. 



PRAYER. 

Almighty God, who hast given us words, 
which without thy Spirit we cannot use, enable 
me, I beseech thee, so to examine myself by 
them, that I come not with v r ain babbling before 
thee, without feeling, without understanding, to 
judge myself, and eat and drink my own condem- 
nation. Suffer not the enemy to blind my eyes 
with false emotions, and vain resolutions, and 
fictitious hopes, to hide from me the real condi- 
tion of my soul. Before I presume to eat of thy 
bread, and drink of thy cup, and call myself by 
thy name, and take thy sacred words upon my 
lips, merciful God, grant me thy light to know 



MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 207 

what I am saying, and faith to believe it, and 
grace to pursue it, in the Spirit of Him who 
taught me thus to pray. Amen. 



" OUR FATHER WHICH ART IN HEAVEN." 

" Our Father." The Father of our Lord Je- 
sus Christ, who is said to be the first-born of 
many brethren—" My Father and your Father." 
The family of God, the children of the Most 
High, and brethren of Jesus Christ, are not the 
world entire. " Wherefore come out from among 
them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and 
touch not the unclean thing; and I will be a Fa- 
ther unto you, and ye shall be my sons and 
daughters, saith the Lord Almighty." And for- 
asmuch as of him the whole family in heaven 
and earth are named, they are those exclusively 
who bear the name of Christ, and walk in his 
Spirit. " For as many as are led by the Spirit 
of God they are the sons of God." As many 
and no more: not all the thousands who from 
their infancy repeat this prayer, nor even the 
hundreds who at every celebration, " sit as my 
people sitteth," at his holy table. The Creator 
and Sovereign Lord of all men, has never called 
himself the Father of the fallen world: nor an- 
swers to that appellation, until he has first sent 
forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, " cry- 
ing, Abba, Father." Then, ere I present my 



208 MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 

petition to the King of Kings, am I right in the 
superscription, in which every name and attri- 
bute of Deity is put aside; and lest the cry of the 
servant should intermingle as it were, and over- 
bear the confidence of the child, the Abba stands 
alone. This prayer which I thought so easy and 
have said so often, I now almost hesitate to 
begin, lest I mix with that sweet sound the 
voice of fear, or cry of unwilling subjugation. — 
" If I be a father, where is my honor/' saith the 
Almighty. " If God were your Father, ye 
would love me," said the blessed Jesus. The 
first sentence of the Lord's prayer is a confession 
of the Christian faith, full and explicit as any 
length of words could make it, in which I profess 
to believe myself a child of God, a member of 
Christ, and an inheritor of the kingdom of Hea- 
ven, Is it true? Let no one deceive himself, 
and venture with this address to approach the 
throne on which the God of nature sits alone, 
his majesty untempered by the sweet incense of 
the atoning sacrifice. " He that hath not the 
Son hath not the Father;" hath no such father, 
and if I begin my prayer without this meaning, 
without the faith of Christ and the influence of 
the Spirit, I give it to the winds, for there is none 
to own it. In one sense, the highest and most 
precious sense in which we are privileged thus 
to address our Maker, God has properly speak- 
ing but one Son, " This is my beloved Son, in 
whom I am well pleased:" The only-begotten 



MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 209 

of the Father, in whom, as members united to 
one head, we are brought into that near rela- 
tionship to God which he so graciously acknow- 
ledges, and so mysteriously calls "fellowship:" 
" Fellowship with God the Father, and with the 
Son." 

1 cannot compass that mystery, but I can 
enjoy its blessedness; I know not the manner of 
the union, but I can taste the sweetness of this 
near communion with Him. If I know no 
more, I know what a Father is. God has a 
great incommunicable name; but he does not 
call himself by that. He has a covenant name, 
Jehovah, mighty to save! but it is not by that 
he teaches us to call him. I know not why, in 
the prayer of his own inditing, this single appel- 
lation stands alone, except it be because he loves 
it best, and best delights in the spirit that can 
use it, and the state of mind that it expresses; 
and if it be so, I cannot better prepare to present 
myself acceptably before him, than by imbibing 
of this spirit, the spirit of adoption, the feelings 
of a child, simple, submissive, and confiding; 
pleased to depend on him, willing to be ruled 
by him, earnest to please him, and sure to be 
beloved of him. 



PRAYER. 

Thou, who of thy great love hast called 
thyself our Father, and chosen to thyself a 
19 



210 MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 

family in Jesus Christ, put thou upon me, I be- 
seech thee, the seal of thine adoption, the name 
and image of thy own blessed Son, that I 
may come with holy confidence before thee, 
and take without fear the blessings of thy 
house. And grant that feeding in faith upon 
the body and blood of Christ, I may be assured 
of my eternal union with him, in whom thou 
art well-pleased; and be admitted to more near 
communion with thee, in the sensible fellow- 
ship of thy Holy Spirit. God, if it be thy 
pleasure this day to receive me as thy child, put 
from me the spirit of bondage and the sinful 
habits of the world, that being enabled neither 
to dishonor nor distrust thee, I may walk before 
men in righteousness and peace, and enter now 
into the rest prepared for thy family on earth 
and in heaven, here and for ever. Amen. 



" HALLOWED BE THY NAME." 

Alas! how often has the lying lip profaned 
that name, in the very utterance of this false 
petition! Where was I last night? Where do 
I mean to be to-morrow? What did I last be- 
fore I came to say the prayer? What shall I do 
next, as soon as it is over? It is by the sup- 
pliant himself, very often, God sends the accept- 
ance or rejection of the petition: and I may be 
the first to join in some unhallowed jest, or some 



MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 211 

ungodly sport; to break the sanctity of the Sab- 
bath, or take his name in vain: or contrariwise, 
to vindicate the Father's honor and approve my 
prayer, by a refusal to countenance or mix with 
those that do so. Did I say rejection? This is 
a prayer that never was rejected: but the heart 
that means to sin or loves to sin, can be heard 
in it only to condemnation; when although we 
mean it not, and wish it not, God's holiness will 
be vindicated, and his name be sanctified in the 
destruction of the wicked: of thousands who 
so pray but do not so intend. Oh, why am I 
afraid to go to the Sacrament only with an im- 
penitent heart, lest I provoke God's judgments 
against me — I do in this very prayer invoke 
them. I implore his sanctifying spirit upon all 
who profess his name, that they may glorify 
him; his judgments upon all who dishonor and 
despise it, that He may glorify himself. By his 
grace in me, or by his wrath upon me, his name 
must finally be hallowed, and my prayer ful- 
filled; and every time I repeat it, I pronounce 
him just when He judges, and clear when He 
condemns. In this again is the faith of Christ 
exhibited — is is the disciple's prayer — it is Chris- 
tian character added to Christian principle: 
works added to our faith. " He that dishonor- 
ed me, dishonoreth the Father that sent me." 
It is God's name in Christ, and Christ's name in 
me, that I desire may be hallowed: for inasmuch 
as we have taken his holy name upon us, and 



212 MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 

are become his sanctuary upon earth, u we are 
the temples of the living God;" whatever brings 
disgrace upon our profession, or puts us to de- 
served shame; or unseen of men, affords a tri- 
umph to the powers of darkness, does indeed 
unhallow the name of Christ, and in him of the 
Father. " If any man defile the temple of God, 
him shall God destroy; — which temple are 
ye." Should I multiply words without num- 
ber, I could not express more strongly my desire 
and purpose to lead a godly and religious life. 
' : Hallowed be thy name" — the name of Christ, 
the name of Christian. How have the pure 
characters of that new name been exhibited hi- 
therto in this perturbed and guilty bosom? If 
from the heart, in all its recesses, we can breathe 
this wish, little could be added in condemnation 
of our sins past, and aspirations 1 after holiness 
in our lives to come. For who has dishonored 
my Father's name as I have: or who, unless he 
hear me in this suit, so likely, nay, so sure, to 
dishonor it again? Can I proceed with a 
prayer that condemns me, and utter aspirations 
after holiness that my sinful heart may pre- 
sently deny, my lips and conversation seem to 
contradict? Yes — for I come to ask, and not to 
promise. " Blessed are they that hunger and 
thirst after righteousness, for they shall be fill- 
ed." In the deep hatred of my soul for %sin, 
in its intensest longings after holiness, in bitter- 
est remembrance of the times when I have 



MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 213 

uttered this name, without thought, heard it 
without emotion, dishonored it without remorse, 
I can use this prayer, for he knows that to will 
is present with me; and when to perform I find 
not, I will still repeat it, until he arise and help 
me for his great name sake. 



PRAYER. 

Hear thou my prayer, God, in mercy, not 
in judgment, and for thy great name's sake take 
away the transgressions with which I have dis- 
honored and profaned it, that they be no more 
found. So cleanse me with the blood of Christ 
that I may be worthy to bear his name; 
and forasmuch as I go now to thy altar to 
profess myself his disciple, give me courage, 
gracious Lord, hereafter to confess him before 
all men. and live to the honor and glory of his 
name, in an ungodly and unbelieving world. 
Prevent me, I beseech thee, this day, that I 
profane not thy holy mysteries, with levity and 
carelessness — with vain and worldly thoughts — 
that I bring not any idols in my heart, to un- 
hallow thy sanctuary and mock thy sacred rite. 
Above all, Lord Jesus, prevent me, that I give 
not to these thy creatures the worship and the 
power that belongs only to thee, blessed Sa- 
viour, one and very God, in whom only is sal- 
vation. Amen. 

19* 



214 MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 

" THY KINGDOM COME." 

This prayer is addressed to God the Father. 
It is, therefore, the kingdom of the Father that 
is intended: as it is variously called in Scrip- 
ture, the kingdom of God — the kingdom of 
heaven. But it is also written that the Father 
hath committed all government to the Son — all 
power in heaven and earth. "The govern- 
ment shall be upon his shoulder, and he shall 
be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the everlasting 
Father." Christ in his kingly character as- 
sumes his Father's name — sits down upon his 
throne — receives the kingdom from him. And 
thus, it is the kingdom of Christ that is invoked, 
although the Father only is addressed. Many 
have been surprised that there is no mention of 
Christ in this prayer: and it is possible that 
some have even ventured to use it in unbelief 
of Christ: whereas, he is indeed the life and 
unction of the whole, without whom it has no 
meaning, as it can have no acceptance: for as 
we have already seen that there is no Father of 
a fallen world, except the Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, so neither is there any kingdom 
of God into which a sinner can enter, but the 
kingdom of Christ the anointed of the Father. 
Unless we mean this, we mean nothing. And 
alas! very many do mean nothing when they 
go on from day to day, addressing themselves 



MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 215 

in these words to the Most High. What king- 
dom is it that they entreat for? Not Christ's 
kingdom upon earth, for they are doing much to 
stay its progress and hinder its establishment; 
and if their wishes could defeat their prayers, 
would for ever postpone his coming to possess 
it. Or if his kingdom in heaven be intended, 
we scarcely think they are so willing or so well 
prepared as to renew their entreaties day by day 
with heartfelt earnestness. Nay, why need I in- 
quire of another's meaning, I myself have said 
it often without knowing or caring what I meant, 
without meaning anything. It is an awful thing 
to come so solemnly and frequently before Al- 
mighty God, and ask we know not what. There 
could scarcely perhaps be a better test of our 
preparedness for the holy communion than this 
one sentence of the Lord's Prayer — " Thy king- 
dom come." " The kingdom of God is within 
you," saith our Lord. As a personal prayer, 
we need not make a distinction between the 
kingdoms of grace and glory; they are in fact 
but a continuance of the same reign within us, 
and the one can never be without the other: if 
Christ does not reign in our hearts by faith, we 
can never be partakers of a more glorious king- 
dom, whether on earth or in heaven; and He 
will not prove so powerless a king, as to lose in 
glory the subjects of his grace. We ask, there- 
fore, that his power come within us, that it reign 
over us, that it grow in us, and subdue us, and 



216 MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 

control us, and do all that sovereignty can do 
and has a right to do, and graciously wills to do 
in the disposal of us; until every usurper in our 
bosoms be expelled, especially the sin that has 
had dominion over us; all that is opposite, as 
well as all that opposes itself to the entire sub- 
jugation of our souls to his most Holy Spirit. 
We ask the new birth unto righteousness — for 
" except a man be born again he cannot see the 
kingdom of God." " The unrighteous cannot 
inherit the kingdom." We ask all the disci- 
pline, the suffering, it may be, the contempt and 
persecution by which the children of God are 
separated from the world, for " We must through 
much tribulation enter into the kingdom of 
heaven." We ask to enjoy the highest fruition 
of the life of faith — a For the kingdom of God 
is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy 
Ghost." And daily we repeat the prayer, be- 
cause we require the perpetual exercise and in- 
crease of his sovereign grace within us, as we 
require the protection of his sovereign power 
without us; and because on the entire subjuga- 
tion of our will and affections, and the expulsion 
of every thing inimical, depends our prepara- 
tion for the kingdom of heaven, and final attain- 
ment of it. It is in short, a prayer for salva- 
tion, in all its bearings: personal, individual sal 
vation; with all its blessings, its duties, and ite 
claims; its present peace, and everlasting wealth 
And it is a social as well as personal prayer, fo; 



MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 217 

the glory of God as well as the salvation of 
mankind. A time will be " when the kingdoms 
of this world shall become the kingdoms of our 
God," and when " He shall judge the quick and 
dead at his appearing and kingdom;" "When 
they shall gather out of the kingdom all things 
that offend ;" and the Son of man, the victim 
heretofore, and now the victor, shall reign alone 
until his enemies be made his footstool. Con- 
sciously or unconsciously; willingly or unwil- 
lingly; whatever views we have adopted of the 
time and manner of our Lord's appearing to 
establish his universal kingdom, we do indeed 
invoke that final consummation every time we 
repeat the prayer. How little expected, how 
much less desired! " Blessed are they that shall 
eat bread in the kingdom of heaven;" — that 
" shall eat and drink at his table in his king- 
dom, and sit with him on his throne;" but how 
can I eat the bread of his kingdom upon earth, 
if I be not ready for the marriage-supper of the 
Lamb? or how be prepared for that, if I am un- 
fit for this? The communion is but that feast 
begun; Jesus eats bread with me now in all the 
sympathy of his suffering manhood; as here- 
after I shall eat with him in all the glory of his 
triumphant Godhead. The slave is weary of 
his bondage — the oppressed is weary of his op- 
pressor — the captive is weary of his dungeon 
and his chains — even so longs my soul after 



218 MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 

thee, God; and so shall my prayer be, that in 
me and around me, and for ever the prince of 
this world be dethroned, and the reign of sin be 
ended. 



PRAYER. 

I do beseech thee, King of Kings, by thy 
long-suffering goodness and protracted promise, 
now to put forth thy power and come among us. 
Come in thy grace to them that know thee not: 
come in more near communion to them that 
love thee: come, in the season appointed of the 
Father, and take full possession of thine own. 
So establish thou now thy throne in my heart, 
that I may with joy abide the day of thy coming, 
and stand in my place when thou appearest. 
Make thyself room by casting out whatever 
disputes thy power — whatever rivals thy love, 
or resists thy grace, or divides thy sovereignty 
within me. Grant, Lord Jesus, that as the 
symbols of thy death and resurrection are this 
day exhibited before me, I may find in them the 
blessed assurance of my own death unto sin, 
and resurrection unto life — that dying with thee, 
and alive unto thee, I may live from day to day 
in patient desire of thy returning, and most 
blessed expectation to reign with thee in glory 
everlasting. Amen. 



MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 219 



"THY WILL BE DONE ON EARTH AS IT IS IN 
HEAVEN." 

In Christ only has the will of God been mani- 
fested, and in Christ fulfilled; in him exhibited, 
and in him obeyed ; in his example learned, and 
in his spirit loved, and in his strength attained. 
Do we ask impossibilities? No; the Father's 
will has once been done on earth, as perfectly 
as ever it was done in heaven; done in the like- 
ness of the flesh, and it shall be so again; the 
enemy has sown tares, but another's scythe shall 
reap them. "When he shall appear, we shall 
be like him, for we shall see him as he is." 
When the blessed Jesus dictated these words, it 
was as if he enforced his own sayings. "I came 
not to do mine own will, but the will of my 
Father which sent me." "If any man will 
come after me, let him take up his cross daily, 
and follow me." That conformity to the image 
of the Son, to which the children of God are 
predestinated, whether to be made " Conform- 
able to his death, that we may attain to his 
resurrection," or to be "Transformed by the 
renewing of our minds, that we may prove 
what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect 
will of God," is the personal blessing intreated 
for in this petition. Is it a hard saying — is it a 
compulsory prayer;— something that I must say, 
and ought to wish, and cannot attain to! If I 



220 MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 

think so, I have forgotten how my prayer began: 
the heavenly Father never willed any thing 
inimical to the happiness of his children: and I 
have forgotten how he has dealt with me hither- 
to, for surely goodness and mercy have followed 
me all the days of my life: and I have forgotten 
his promise, "It is your father's good pleasure 
to give you the kingdom." If his will were 
wholly done on earth, there would be heaven 
here: if it were done in me, a child of earth, as 
Jesus did it, it would be my heaven. And since 
God cannot require impossibilities, or command 
a prayer that shall never be fulfilled, it will be 
so. The unruly wills and affections of his peo- 
ple shall be conformed, and the opposing wills 
of his enemies defeated, and wherever his king- 
dom is, there shall his will be done. As often 
as I repeat this prayer, I seek my own felicity 
in time and in eternity; I desire life, security 
and peace ; I ask to follow Jesus, to death, to 
life, to immortality, to be with him, to be like 
him; for so is it the Father's will, "In bringing 
many sons to glory, to make the captain of 
their salvation perfect." If there be one prayer 
among many prayers, that can be said with all 
my heart, without fear, without reserve, it should 
be this: since in it I put myself beyond the reach 
of evil, beyond the reach of Satan, the world, 
myself, whose adverse willings I have found so 
redolent of sorrow, danger, and remorse. When 
I consider what his good will has been towards 



MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 221 

the sons of men, when He made them in inno- 
cence, when He redeemed them in guilt, when 
He contrived for them another innocence and 
another paradise, his providence, his gifts, his 
promises, all that he says He is, and all that I 
have found him, the sense of his goodness be- 
comes so overwhelming, I feel as if this should 
be my only prayer, " Thy will be done," for I 
can want no more. And because I am slow to 
learn his will, and weak to do it, and fretful to 
submit to it, and wilful to resist it, I will but 
repeat my suit the oftener, and urge it the more 
vehemently, " Not my will, but thine be done." 



PRAYER. 

Almighty God, who seest the hearts of all 
men, judge me, I pray thee, whether there be 
in me any thing that I prefer before thee, and 
desire in opposition to thy will, or pursue in 
ignorance, or refuse in unbelief: and disclose to 
me the secret reservations of my soul, with grace 
to put them from me. Make me whatever thou 
wouldst have me be — show me what thou 
wouldst have me do. It is the desire of my 
soul to be conformed in all things to thy will 
and pleasure. Enable me to lay upon thy altar 
an acceptable gift, myself and all that I have, 
the pride of my heart, the wilfulness of my de- 
sires, the selfishness of my passions and affec- 
20 



222 MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 

tions: I desire, Lord, that they be sacrificed 
and put to shame, before these emblems of thy 
dying love: thy gentleness, forbearance, meek- 
ness, humility, and patient obedience to thy 
Father's will. Grant me in these tokens of thy 
humanity, so to behold thy perfectness, that I 
may love nothing but what thou lovest, and 
seek nothing, and choose nothing but in assimi- 
lation with thyself; to walk in thy footsteps, to 
see thee as thou art, to be with thee, and to be 
like thee everlastingly. Amen. 



" GIVE US THIS DAT OUR DAILY BREAD." 

How beautifully this sentence stands connect- 
ed with the former, bearing out the Scripture 
precept, " Seek first the kingdom of God, and all 
these things shall be added unto you." Put 
that first which is first, the welfare of the soul, 
the desires and necessities of your moral and spi- 
ritual existence. And then remember, that he 
who made the soul, made the body also. He 
does not despise the one half of his work, while 
he cherishes the other : he does not treat the 
health, and ease, and gratification of our corpo- 
real existence, as things beneath his notice; as 
if he were indifferent to its sufferings, and priva- 
tions, or would have us insensible to his indul- 
gent provision for it. Jesus had a body as well 
as a soul, and he endured bodily wants and 



MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 223 

infirmities, as well as mental and spiritual an- 
guish: that he might learn sympathy with both, 
and purify and ennoble our whole being, by 
taking it into union with himself. True, that 
his body was crucified, and so may our's be; 
and true, his heart was broken, and so may 
our's: but not to condemnation, not to destruc- 
tion, not abandoned and uncared for by him 
who bought us. His body was not left in the 
grave; although it was laid there; neither shall 
ours be in the dust, though it return thither. — 
" The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was 
shed for me, preserve my body and soul to ever- 
lasting life." 

The sentence may comprehend a request for 
spiritual, as well as temporal sustentation; all by 
which our souls are strengthened and refreshed, 
as our bodies are by the bread and wine: but 
as it is the only reference in the Lord's prayer 
to those temporal blessings which we know we 
are to seek of God, I think it was intended by 
him in this sense. There was no preference in 
the Father's love when He gave his only Son 
to assume our whole mortal nature, and render 
it all immortal: and He has promised to with- 
hold from neither soul nor body any manner of 
thing that is g od. 

" This day our daily bread;" no doubt intend- 
ed as an example of the manner in which all 
temporal good is to be solicited: with moderate 
desires, and limited to the present time. "Be 



224 MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 

careful for nothing, but by prayer and supplica- 
tion make your requests known unto God," 
" day by day" — our present desires — our daily 
cares— our existing wants and difficulties, and 
embarrassments. But make no provision for to- 
morrow even in your prayers — the morrow can 
take thought for itself. We have said the prayer 
to-day, we can say it again to-morrow, and again 
and again the next day, and " Whatever ye ask, 
believing, it shall be done unto you." But no 
forecasting — no anxious and careful anticipa- 
tions of an uncertain future of which we know 
nothing, and with which we have nothing to do: 
if any such prayer be answered, it will be but 
thus — " Commit yourself to him that careth for 
you." There will no bonds and securities be 
given us for the bread of to-morrow, or the inde- 
pendent happiness of years to come. A thought 
of independence, a feeling of security, would 
mar this prayer. Whatever my heavenly Father 
has given me in possession, though it be enough 
for my life and for my children after me, I will 
ask it of him every day afresh, for it is not mine 
for to-morrow: and everyday I will receive my 
earthly blessings as a new grant, fresh from his 
bountiful hand. Whenever I repeat these 
words, I intreat He will prolong to me from day 
to day whatever I would not part with, and add 
to it what my soul desires or my body needs: 
whatever the answer be to-day, I would learn 
to say, "It is well, and let to-morrow be the 



MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 225 

secret of omniscience. I do not know, I will 
not seek to know what a day may bring forth: 
for if I think I do, if I have one day's provision 
in my grasp, or one day's independence in my 
heart, I cannot say this portion of the prayer; I 
cannot mock my Maker with a request for what 
I do not want: alas! may I never mock him 
with the request of what I cannot trust him for; 
distrust, anxiety, will as much spoil my prayer 
as independence. 



PRAYER. 

thou who hast promised to thy people all 
things that are good, and hast never failed in 
all the good that thou hast promised; — Thou 
who hast called me this day to celebrate the 
gift of thy Son, and receive the gifts and 
graces of thy Spirit, pardon and put from 
me all careful thoughts about the things that 
perish, which would unfit me for thy feast — 
suppress in me all ambitious and exorbitant 
desires, all yearnings of vanity and schemes of 
avarice, beyond thy promise of what is needful 
for me. God, thou art the author of all 
natural affections, feelings and necessities — to 
thee I desire to commit myself for their needful 
and wholesome satisfaction, and wait upon thee 
in faith for so much of this world's good as will 
keep my body from suffering, and my mind 
20* 



226 MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 

from care. Enable me to appear joyfully at 
thy table, in expectation of the good gifts of 
thy providence and grace, not according to my 
deserts, but according to the measure of thy 
great goodness, and the merits of our Lord and 
Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen. 



" FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES, AS WE FORGIVE 



Penitence and resentment cannot be in exer- 
cise in the same bosom at the same time; a deep, 
humiliating sense of our own wrong, self-abase- 
ment and contrition, cannot co-exist with an 
angry and impatient recollection of the wrong 
of others: because, however injurious and of- 
fensive another's conduct may have been, the 
penitent knows secrets of himself that will sink 
him lower than any thing he knows of others: 
the chief of sinners will see all other sins 
eclipsed by the blackness and darkness of his 
own. If he does not, if the sense of his own 
guilt does not soften his heart to pity and in- 
dulgence, it is because he has no due apprecia- 
tion of it, is no penitent, and consequently no 
subject for Divine forgiveness. The Gospel 
dwells therefore upon this clause of the peti- 
tion — " For if ye forgive men their trespasses, 
your heavenly Father will also forgive you — 
but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, 



MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 227 

neither will your heavenly Father forgive your 
trespasses." Not that our remission of some 
poor hundred pence is to be the price, and equi- 
valent for our cancelled thousands — nor our 
seventy times seven to be cast into the balance 
against our need of daily-renewed forgiveness: 
but because the disposition to forgive is an 
indispensable evidence of that state of mind to 
which only forgiveness has been promised — 
self-condemnation and self-abhorrence. when 
the soul is really there, in dust and ashes before 
God, how little consciousness is there that we 
have been or could be wronged by any thing: 
that the foot which should crush us would do 
us more than right; or that any being owes us 
any thing but hatred and destruction. All that 
is opposed to this spirit of self-abasement — all 
that is high, vindictive, tenacious and exacting, 
arbitrary, contentious, and intolerant, is at 
variance with the intent of the petition. In 
full agreement with it is the divine injunction, 
" Leave there thy gift, first go and be recon- 
ciled to thy brother;" and the church pursues 
the idea when to faith and repentance she sub- 
joins, as the only qualification for the sacra- 
mental feast, that we be in love and charity with 
all men. 

Shall I examine myself before I proceed with 
my supplication, whether I have fulfilled the 
condition of it? No — I will go on— I will say 
as the Apostles did — " Lord, increase our faith." 



228 MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 

I will pray, " Lord, forgive us our trespasses/' 
and the thought will shame my pride and melt 
my heart, and as I proceed to number my 
transgressions, to spread them out before him; 
to look backward upon God's unanswered 
claims, and the many beside God, to whom I 
have not been all that I might have been, all 
that they justly might have expected of me, 
and forward to the remaining conflict with these 
my hated, my forgiven sins; surely the suppli- 
cation will fulfil its own conditions. I shall 
forget that there is any wrong any where but 
in my own sinful bosom: myself to God or man 
the only debtor. 

" Forgive us" — without Christ there is no 
forgiveness of sins. " This is my blood of the 
New Testament, which is shed for many for the 
remission of sins." In Christ, there is no more 
remembrance of them. " Their sins and ini- 
quities will I remember no more" — Heb. x. 17. 
"The blood of Christ taketh away all sin." 
Addressing ourselves to God the Father, who 
for the glory of his hallowed name, and by the 
exercise of his sovereign will, hath delivered us 
from the power of darkness, and translated us 
into the kingdom of his dear Son: in whom we 
have redemption through his blood, even the 
forgiveness of sins: we come with holy confi- 
dence from day to day to renew this granted 
prayer, and be re-assured that it is granted. 
For though, on behalf of his brethren, Christ 



MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 229 

has made an end of transgression, and there is 
now no condemnation to them that are in him, 
the power of sin is still so great within us, that 
it is only by daily penitence our hatred of it can 
be manifested, and by daily prayer our hearts be 
comforted against it by the renewed sense of 
pardon. In the spirit of a child to deprecate a 
father's anger, and those timely chastisements, 
by which his love has superseded the judgments 
of his wrath, which it becomes me yet to fear — 
" Blessed is Tie that feareth always;" as soon as 
I am conscious of any sin, though it be but the 
sudden emotion or momentary thought, with 
the name of Jesus in my mind, if not upon my 
lips, I ask forgiveness of my Father, lest that 
his anger be stirred, though but a little. And 
because there are sins unnumbered, of which I 
am not conscious, or commit unmindfully, many 
times daily I repeat this prayer — " Forgive us 
our trespasses;" and in every exhibition of the 
one only oblation and atonement for the sins of 
the world, I go to seek fresh assurance of the 
forgiveness of my own, while I gather a deeper 
sense and quicker sensibility of the desert and 
hatefulness of sin. 



PRAYER. 

Holy Father, my heart is deceitful above 
all things, and thou only knowest it: — deepen 



230 MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 

in me, I beseech thee, the hatred and the sense 
of sin, that with a mourning and a penitent 
spirit, in self-knowledge and self-abhorrence, I 
may seek the blessing of forgiveness in the 
atoning blood of Christ, and taste the amazing 
value of his blood shed, and body broken, and 
all the benefits exhibited and promised to me in 
this Sacrament. Set before me the follies of 
my youth, and the sins of my life past, and the 
mass of iniquity that is within me, that I may 
intreat thy mercy in presence of this most Holy 
Sacrifice, and receive in faith these tokens of 
forgiveness: so shall they indeed be precious to 
my soul. With thy Spirit's help I do purpose 
to render to every man, blessed Jesus, accord- 
ing as thou hast rendered unto me, mercy, for- 
bearance, and indulgence; to bear with sinners 
as thou hast borne with me; and do unto all 
men not according to their righteousness, but 
after the example of thy loving kindness and 
sympathy for the guilty and the unthankful. 
Oh pour on me this day, Lord, the softening 
influences of thy Spirit, to subdue the asperities 
of my nature, into the likeness of thy love. 
Amen. 

" LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION, BUT DELIVER 
US FROM EVIL." 

" Let no man say when he is tempted, I 
am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempt- 



MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 231 

ed with evil, neither tempteth he any man; 
but every man is tempted when he is drawn 
away of his own lust and enticed. Then when 
lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and 
sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." 
Against this process, therefore, I conceive it is 
that we beseech our heavenly Father, the guide 
of our steps, and disposer of our destiny, that 
he will in his providence lead us, and by his 
grace prevent whatever would prove a tempta- 
tion to our souls, by the inciting and enticing of 
our ungodly passions. True as it is, and must 
be, that God is never the author of the sin 
within us, He may for our humiliation and bet- 
ter knowledge of ourselves, afford occasion for 
its development, as a skilful mediciner will some- 
times provoke a crisis, the better to effect a cure; 
and it may be with ourselves to make this ne- 
cessary, or by timely supplication not so. He 
led his people forty years through the wilder- 
ness, to try them, and to prove them, and to 
show them what was in their hearts. And such 
I apprehend to be the nature of the evils and 
temptations against which we are here instruct- 
ed to pray. How many grievous lusts and bit- 
ter punishments, timely and honest prayer might 
have saved to that rebellious host, is not reveal- 
ed; but there is no limit to the power of prayer: 
he who has undertaken to bring us to the pro- 
mised land, has not laid down the chart by 
which we are to travel thither; there may be 



232 MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 

longer ways, and shorter — perilous ways and 
safe ones; ways of darkness through which we 
shall be saved, though so as by fire, and ways 
of light and peace in which we may almost an- 
ticipate our heaven; and this may, I believe I 
need not hesitate to say it will, depend upon the 
truth and sincerity with which the child of God 
can thus address his Father. " Lead us not into 
temptation, but deliver us from evil." 

Remark the words, for it is no common pray- 
er: and no thing of course that we desire what 
we ask. To use it rightly, there needs a heart 
more afraid of sin than of any thing beside; 
more careful to avoid it, than to possess the 
world;— for that world itself, in all the blazon- 
ment of its prosperity, its pleasures, and its 
smiles, will be oftener than any thing the temp- 
tation against which we pray: and the evil of 
all evils, temporal and eternal, that we have to 
deprecate, is to be partakers in its destinies, and 
share its condemnation. Oh no, believe it, it is 
no easy prayer to use, in confiding ignorance 
of what it may imply. The temptation that 
would awake the dormant lust, may lie conceal- 
ed in some sweet syren spot, on which our eye 
is set for happiness, or hidden in some deep mine 
of gold, in which we are about to dig for trea- 
sure. Grace has done much indeed for the 
heart that can pray daily, at all costs, at all 
ventures, "Lead us not into temptation: — 
Grant me the refusal of my heart's desires: — 






MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 233 

Grant me the privation of my bosom's treasures. 
How am 1 prepared for such dark paradox as 
may be hidden beneath my daily supplication to 
be kept from evil, from sin, and all the punish- 
ments that follow sin, the only real evils? I be- 
lieve it is not without reason that these two sen- 
tences are joined in one. Were it what are called 
the common ills of life that are intended, the 
two petitions might have stood apart. But in 
fact, the casualties of life are not, properly speak- 
ing, evils to the child of God: thousands shall 
fall beside him, and ten thousand at his right 
hand, and it shall not come nigh him, until the 
moment when his sin provokes, or his purifica- 
tion requires the infliction. We do not pray, 
nor are we encouraged to pray, that wilfully ex- 
posing ourselves to temptation in the gratifica- 
tion of our desires, we may be kept from the 
spiritual evil that might ensue upon it, or the 
temporal evil that might bring us to repentance; 
eternal destruction would be the grant of such 
a prayer. I ask first — and be it by his grace the 
first desire of my soul — to be kept from all oc- 
casions, opportunities, and incitements to sin: 
"Lead us not into temptation:" and then, from 
the evils which my enemies may devise, to do 
me hurt, or my Father in heaven permit, to do 
me good, I pray in submission to his wisdom to 
be relieved, and safely and speedily to be deliver- 
ed. " Deliver us from evil." Never could I 
venture to reverse the prayer — to ask a danger- 
21 



234 MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 

ous and nnsanctified prosperity, a preservation 
from suffering to go on in sin. 



PRAYER. 

Almighty God, who seest that I know not 
what is good for me, nor how to ask any thing as 
I ought, hear my prayer according to thy wisdom 
and goodness, and answer it not according to 
my ignorance and folly. Give me to dread no 
evil so much as sin, and to call nothing good 
but what has thy blessing in it. Enable me, I 
implore thee, to renounce all sinful pleasures and 
dangerous pursuits, and ungodly associations 
and unrighteous gains: which do begin in temp- 
tation and end in evil. Grant, Heavenly Father, 
that as I this day claim the privilege of thy child, 
and present myself at thy table as a member of 
Christ, I may come resolved to fulfil the vow 
that I have taken upon me, to renounce the 
works of darkness, the pomps and vanities of 
the world, the lusts of the flesh and the pride of 
life, and whatever might hinder the divine life 
within nie, or prevent its sacred influence around 
me. If I am not able of myself to put away the 
right hand or the right eye that offend; do thou 
in mercy, God, remove the evil from me, and 
give me grace to understand what thou doest, 
and to praise thy name in all things: its the 
strength and faith of Jesus, who gave up himself 
to destroy the works of darkness. Amen. 



MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 235 

M FOR THI^E IS THE KINGDOM, THE POWER AND 
THE GLORY, FOR EVER AND EVER. AMEN." 

Independence is the fondest dream of human 
imbecility, the maddest project of created being. 
Angels conceived it, and were cast out of hea- 
ven, for there it could not exist. Man aspired 
to it, and was ejected from his Maker's presence, 
for there it was impossible. And now in every 
fallen soul the in-born desire to be our own, and 
not His who made us, is too strong for any thing 
but grace to overcome, and even that but 
slowly. If we cannot displace the Almighty 
from his throne, we would share it with him: or 
if we must consent that he should reign in hea- 
ven, we will aim at some control in sublunary 
things: or if we must give up the kingdom of his 
providence, we will be sharers with him in the 
kingdom of his grace: to the latest moment we 
will have something, be something, do some- 
thing, of which the power and the praise shall 
be our own. So pertinaciously and step by step 
do we defend the strong holds of our pride and 
independence, that it is not a small thing to find 
that point in our Christian course, at which we 
can say truly, and with all our heart, " Thine is 
the kingdom, the power and the glory," and 
add to it our willing and well-pleased "Amen." 

It is one aim of the religion of Jesus Christ to 
put an end to this conflict between the Creator 



236 MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 

and the creature: and the Gospel being the 
scheme of God, while all other religions have 
been of man's devising, as might be expected, 
it is the only one by which boasting is excluded — 
" By the law of works?" says the Apostle, " No, 
but by the law of faith;" and man is taught, re- 
quired — nay, compelled to disclaim not his pos- 
sessions only, but himself; — " Ye are not your 
own, ye are bought with a price;" — not only 
his bodily and mental powers, but the virtues of 
his natural disposition, and all the gifts and 
graces of his spiritual life; to renounce every 
good thought and right desire, as well as every 
work acceptable to God, and give the praise and 
glory to another, even to Jesus Christ, who 
worketh in us to will and to do according to his 
good pleasure: — thus leaving to the fallen sons 
of Adam, sin, misery, and death, their sole pro- 
prietorship. " Every good gift and every per- 
fect gift is from above, and cometh down from 
the Father of lights." Am I content? For if 
there is one godly disposition more indispensable 
than every other to the due receiving of the 
Lord's Supper, it is this renunciation of myself 
into the hands of my Redeemer, content to be 
nothing, that He may be all; to be abased, that 
He may be exalted; to be counted among those 
that were lost, that He may have all the glory 
of my salvation. Yes, Lord, I am content. — 
Were I less fallen, I never could have known 
such love as thine: I never could have seen all 



MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS, 237 

I now see in those precious emblems of thy body 
and blood, or tasted such sweetness while I feed 
upon thee in them; surely I never could have 
loved thee as I do. " Thine be the kingdom, 
the power, and the glory." Every fresh disco- 
very of my dependence is but a new security 
for my salvation: the sense of it is my present 
peace, the knowledge of it my best assurance of 
happiness for ever. I desire to be independent 
only of myself and rest my all on thee. The 
Father hath given all power to the Son: the re- 
presentative of Jehovah upon earth — the Word: 
the incarnate Word, that in the beginning was 
with God, and was God: by whom all things 
were made — in whom is Life. Jesus is my Sa- 
viour, my brother, my beloved; who else should 
have dominion over me — to whom else would I 
commit the power, or ascribe the glory? One 
with the Father and the Holy Spirit, I believe 
him to be true and very God; and as I believe, 
so from my soul I do desire, " Thine be the 
kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and 



PRAYER. 

Forasmuch as thou hast required, thou just 
and holy God, that all who approach thy sacred 
feast, should renounce themselves, and all that 
is their own, and all that they have done, and of 

21* 



238 MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS. 

thy free grace accept the benefits to be received 
thereby; — so bless me with the sense of my 
dependence, as having nothing, and yet possess- 
ing all things; nothing in myself, but all things 
in Christ my Saviour, that I may desire all glory 
to be given him in heaven and earth, and thank 
thee, Father, that thou hast laid on him the 
salvation and government of all. Make it the 
choice of my heart to be nothing, that I may 
owe all things to his love; to come naked, that 
I may be clothed with his righteousness; hun- 
gry, that I may feed upon his flesh and blood; 
poor, that I may subsist upon the riches of his 
grace; helpless, and lost, and miserable, that I 
may rejoice for ever in the song of heaven — 
"Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be 
unto him that sitteth on the throne, and unto 
the Lamb for ever and ever." Amen. 



SACRAMENTAL THOUGHTS. 



241 



SACRAMENTAL THOUGHTS. 



" FOR AS OFTEN AS YE EAT THIS BREAD, AND DRINK THIS CUP, 
YE DO SHEW THE LORD'S DEATH TILL HE COME."— 1 Cor. Xi, 

26. 

" Till he come" — " And they shall look on 
me whom they have pierced; and they shall 
mourn for him as one mourneth for his only 
son." Zech. xii, 10. And if they must, how- 
little does it avail us to refuse, to be unwilling, 
to be unready, or even to be afraid, to behold 
him now. When those rocks and hills that we 
shall invoke to hide us, will only reverberate our 
long refusal; when He who hath stretched forth 
his hand and no man regarded, shall laugh at 
our calamity and mock our fears; when the 
cry of the bridegroom breaks in upon our unfit- 
ness, and finds us and leaves us in eternal dark- 
ness; is it then we shall be more ready, more 
willing, less afraid? If not, there is but little 
time to lose. The first watch and the second 
watch are past; what must be at some time, may 
be at any time. " The world passeth away and 
the fashion thereof." But what is time, or what 
is earth to me? I have no time but the moment 



242 SACRAMENTAL THOUGHTS. 

that my present pulsation numbers; no earth 
but the space I stand upon; the next step may 
find no footing here, " Every eye shall see him, 
and they that pierced him," and they that reject 
him, and they that forget him. Yes, and they 
that fear him, if, before his coming, fear be not 
cast out by perfect love. If we are any such, it 
does not become us to lie down this night in 
peace; in safety we cannot lie. Unworthy or 
unwilling to look upon the figurative emblems 
of the Saviour's death and passion, emblems of 
patience, lowliness, and sorrow; how shall we 
bear to look upon Himself;—" when he shall be 
revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, 
taking vengeance on them that know not God, 
and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus 
Christ." Blessed Redeemer! I had better meet 
thee now, unworthy though I am, and fearful 
and ashamed, and know thee in thy humiliation, 
before I meet thee in thy glory. There is in thee 
a remedy for unworthiness, for fear and shame; 
but there is none for the refusal of thyself. 

"Shall look on him and mourn;" "Blessed 
are they that mourn," mourn noiv, " for they 
shall be comforted;" weep like the believing 
women at the grave of the crucified, until they 
find him in the risen God: or like Mary, when 
in ignorance and doubt, she went to seek the 
living among the dead, and wept because she 
found him not, or knew not it was He. 
Blessed in ignorance, doubtfulness, and tears, 



SACRAMENTAL THOUGHTS. 243 

are they that mourn now the crucified Jesus, and 
seek him sorrowing at the cross and in the 
tomb. He is not there, but presently he will 
reveal himself, in all the blessings and benefits 
of his resurrection unto life eternal. If we 
be dead with him, we shall also live with him. 
Stranger though I be to his encouraging and 
peace-speaking voice, I may go with my sorrow, 
my ignorance and unbelief, while there is yet 
in Him a pardon and a comforter provided. 
But who will comfort them that never weep 
till the time of rejoicing comes, and never look 
on Him whom they have pierced, till they be- 
hold him in the Lord of glory; outcast mourn- 
ers of a rejoicing universe, destined to look — 
to look for ever from the bottomless pit of their 
perdition, upon Him whom they first slew, and 
then rejected. Lamb of God, Son of God, let me 
know thee first in thy humanity, the terrors of 
the Deity put off — the man of sorrows, the will- 
ing sacrifice, the suffering, uncomplaining, un- 
reproaching victim. Let me wait beneath thy 
cross, go down into thy tomb, ask where they 
have laid thee, and weep until I find thee; 
drink in these elements of the bitterness of thy 
cup, and be baptised with thy baptism unto 
death; — that so at thy second coming I may be 
found as those that are alive from the dead, over 
whom the second death hath no power. 

" Pierced." Who pierced him? Not the 
chaplet of thorns, nor the heathen soldier's spear; 



244 SACRAMENTAL THOUGHTS. 

nor the Jewish Caiaphas,nor the Roman Pilate; 
nor even he who clipped his hand with him in 
the dish. " Behold, I lay down my life, no man 
taketh it from me." They slew him who brought 
him down from heaven to die; whose iniquities 
hid from him his Father's face; whose mortal 
miseries broke his guiltless heart; and theirs the 
deepest wound, who would not let him save 
them. He prayed for his murderers, he only 
wept for these; they slew his manhood, for they 
knew him not; these slay as it were the very 
Deity that they deny — " Crucify to themselves 
the Son of God afresh, and put him to open 
shame:" — those were forgiven, these can never 
be so. 

And now I could think my wrong is deeper 
still. I pierced him, and mine was the deepest 
thrust of all, for I am convinced that he wag 
God. I know that he came down to seek and 
to save the lost — to save me; to give himself a 
ransom for sinners — for me, the chief of sinners. 
I am persuaded of all that he endured, and all 
that he has done to procure salvation for us, and 
all that he still does to bring us to it. I do not 
question the truth of this narration, nor doubt 
the reality of this mysterious transaction. This 
and much more, oh how much more — I know, 
of the love of Him who died! and yet I will 
not go to him — I am afraid to trust him — I shun 
his presence, and neglect his ordinances, and 
refuse him what he died for — the salvation of 



SACRAMENTAL THOUGHTS. 245 

my soul. " Deny the Lord that bought them" 
— deny him his own, withhold from him of the 
travail of his soul that he may be satisfied. If 
we know how hard it is to bear unkindness in 
return for love; to be repulsed with doubts, and 
requited with suspicions, and answered with re- 
fusals where we have rendered all; if we know, 
and who does not know? how deep the wound 
may be of ill-requited benefits, and wronged 
affection, we need not be in doubt who pierced 
the Holy One; who wove the sharpest thorn 
into his crown, and threw the bitterest herb into 
his cup. I did it — I, who at this moment hesi- 
tate to accept his offers of salvation, to believe 
his promises and trust his love, and take his holy 
sacrament to my great and endless comfort — I, 
who, when he bids me to his supper, make ex- 
cuses, refuse to go, or go mistrustful, or return 
unthankful — more blessed in the forgetfulness 
than the remembrance of Him. 

" Behold, I come quickly." It is in vain to 
put the prediction from us: a thousand years 
are but as yesterday when it is passed. The 
kingdom of heaven is at hand, and " Except a 
man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom 
of God." " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son 
of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in 
you." Unless we be partakers, not of the out- 
ward and visible sign only, but of the inward 
and spiritual grace of both the Holy Sacraments, 
we have no participation in his death and resur- 
22 



246 SACRAMENTAL THOUGHTS. 

rection, and how shall we "abide the day of his 
coming, or stand when he appeareth." Unwel- 
come first when he came as a stranger to his 
own — " riding upon an ass, and a colt the foal 
of an ass," " and lifted not up his voice in the 
streets, nor broke the bruised reed, nor quenched 
the smoking flax;" unwelcome now when he 
comes into the sanctuary, crowned with the rain- 
bow wreath of promise, in his hand the olive- 
branch of peace, and thrones himself upon his 
altar, to distribute the gifts and graces of his 
Spirit; once slain, and twice rejected, what will 
the welcome of his kingdom be, when crowned 
with the jewels that his blood has purchased, the 
sword of recompence in his hand, and the day 
of vengeance in his heart — " He cometh with 
clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they 
also which pierced him, and all kindreds of the 
earth shall wail because of him?" Before we 
refuse, before we say we are unfit, or afraid to 
meet him at his table, let us consider the alter- 
native, we must behold him, no distant, invisible, 
inaccessible deity, but " the Son of Man, seated 
at the right hand of power," " That same Jesus 
whom ye crucified, both Lord and Christ." The 
Jesus whom we have pierced, the Christ whom 
we have neglected, is the God and Lord whom 
we must look upon, face to face. Shall we go 
on, and say we are afraid? afraid to remember 
what we are not afraid to forget; afraid to trust, 
but not to disobey him? Oh, would we were 



SACRAMENTAL THOUGHTS. 247 

afraid, for there is cause — to behold the coming, 
not the departing Lord — to brave the living, not 
the dying Saviour. Mark the contrast — "Look 
unto me, all ye ends of the earth, and be ye 
saved." "They shall look upon him whom 
they have pierced, and mourn." 

"As a thief in the night." — This night — any 
night — in the body or out of the body, Jesus, 
Son of God, I may be with thee before thy 
throne, or be an outcast for ever from the king- 
dom of thy grace or glory! 

There is no time to lose; the bread of life, the 
blood of reconciliation is offered me to-day. All 
things are ready except myself. It may be too 
late, it cannot be too soon, that I determine to 
draw near unto thee, and take of what thy gra- 
cious hand holds out. Oh give me grace to 
know what I should do to-day, for I have no to- 
morrow. Prepare my heart, or take it unpre- 
pared; call me, unworthy and unwilling, from 
these paths of indifference and indecision, and 
by the power of thy Spirit compel me to come 
in before the doors be closed on me for ever, and 
to all that I have done against thee, to the sin 
that has crucified and the unbelief that has re- 
jected thee, there be added this last, this only 
inexpiable wrong — the refusal of thy latest in- 
vitation. 



248 SACRAMENTAL THOUGHTS. 



"behold i come quickly." — Rev. xxii r 12, 

Wilt thou return 
Thou great, thou distant One! 

On clouds of heaven 
Triumphant lighting down? 

Shall I see thee 

Thou loved now unseen! 
Thy manhood clothed 

In deity serene? 

See thee, my God, 
My Saviour, brother, friend! 

And be with thee 
Where visits never end? 

Or here, or there — 
Be it at thy decree — 

I know no heaven 
Except the sight of thee. 

If I e'er try 
To think what heaven is — 

Its pearly gates, 
Its golden seats of bliss — 

Nor form, nor mould 
* To fancy's search is given, 
And answer none 
But "Jesus is thy heaven." 

Blessed Saviour! 
Thou art my heaven now — 

Fountain of joy 
Whence all its currents flow. 

Musing thy word 
I hear thy voice the while — 



SACRAMENTAL THOUGHTS. 249 

On nature's front 
I see .thy loving smile — 

Upon my knees 
I seem to know thee near — 

Thy table spread, 
I feel that thou art there: 

And when I share 
Its hallowed mystery, 

In tasted love 
My spirit feeds on thee. 

So known, so seen, 
In sweet communion near, 

In sympathy 
So holy and so dear; 

Jesus, I think, 
Thus, communing with thee, 

Yes, I can think 
What heaven perhaps may be. 

My bosom swells 
To give thy presence room — 

Come, Lord Jesus, 
O quickly, quickly come! 



CONTEMPLATION OF THE ELEMENTS. 

{ GO AND PREPARE US THE PASSOVER, THAT WE MAY EAT." 

Emblems of ill 
Blest harbingers of weal, 
In these mysterious treasures of thy board 
Eternal Lord! 
Thyself reveal. 

22* 



250 SACRAMENTAL THOUGHTS. 

Thyself, as on the eve 

Of that last fearful leave 
Thou wert to take, thou sat'st the saddest guest 

At thine own feast, 
The most unwelcomed and the most unblest; 

Thyself all sympathy, all love, 
But not in earth beneath or heaven above, 
One kindred soul, one heart participant 
To echo thee thy solitary plaint. 
Would that my faith could reach thee, blessed One! 
Not as thou art upon thy throne, 

God incomprehensible, 
Invisible, 

Beyond the stretch, 

Beyond the longing reach 
Of mortal imbecility, 
To share thy nature, or to dwell with thee :— 

No — I would think thee as thou wert, a man — 

Infinitude diminished to the span 

Of man's affections— something 
That I can bring, 
As like to like, within the little sphere 
Of sympathies and sweet communion near, 
Which only kindred souls with kindred share. 

Let the dark heathen serve his unknown God, 

And wisdom proud 

Be thankless for the mystery of thy birth, 

A child of earth — 
I love — O how I love to gaze on thee, 
Thou soften'd beam of light's intensity! — 
So pure, and yet so mild ! As when 
Upon the darkness of this globe terrene 
The mornng sun obtrudes himself, not hastily, 
Quenching our vision with the blaze of day; 
But with a mellowed flame 
Seen first unfelt — the same, 



SACRAMENTAL THOUGHTS. 251 

And yet how different, that presently 

Will drive his blazing chariot through the sky, 

O'er each averted eye — 
Now walking forth so harmlessly, 

So seeming nigh, 
Fancy could almost think to clasp his zone 
And scatheless take him for her own. 

Ride on, thou risen God, and on the head 
Of these thy creatures, from thy zenith shed, 
The fructifying day-beams of thy grace, 
Meridian treasures of thy heavenly place. 
The time will be when I shall love thee so, 

But now 
Used to night, 

I love to gaze on the attempered light 
Of thy pale rising o'er the slumbering earth, 
Sight fitter for an eye of this world's birth. 
I love to call thee Jesus — love to dwell, 

Blessed Immanuel, 
Without that wide infinitude between, 
That chilling secrecy of things unseen, 
Upon thy mortal form — on thee, a man — 

One 
Who felt as I feel, loved as I have loved; 

Was moved 
To prayers, to tears, to sighs, even as I, 
Respondent language of infirmity, 
The brother, husband, friend, whate'er 

On earth is dear — 
All that I ever loved — and Oh, how far above 

All I have had to love, 
Seemest thou thus to me, and still my Lord, 
My Saviour and my God. 
And here, O Jesus, in thy holy place, 

Attent upon thy grace, 



252 SACRAMENTAL THOUGHTS. 

I come to gaze 

Upon the mystery 
That tells me thou couldst dief 

And with a dying one 
On heaven's high throne 

Canst share 
The earth-wak'd sorrow, and the earth-shed tear, 

And canst divide with me 
Earth's worst and weariest — even with me 

The bliss of thine eternity. 



PRAYER. 

Lord Jesus, Son of God and Son of man, as 
by the taking of my nature into thine, thou art 
become partaker of all my susceptibilities and 
infirmities, and by my spiritual union with thee 
hast made me capable of participating in all thy 
glories, and perfections, grant, I beseech thee, 
that I may no more have or desire to have any 
separate existence, any thought or feeling or fa- 
culty independent of thee; any possessions but 
in use for thee, any loves but what thou lovest, 
or grief or pleasure such as thou wilt share with 
me — or cares, but such as I may cast upon thee. 
Grant, Lord, that as I now take into my corpo- 
real frame these emblems of thy humanity, to 
nurture, and sustain, and become incorporate in 
it, so may I imbibe and take into my soul, the 
light, and life, and holiness of thy divine nature 
and grow upon it day by day into thy more per- 



SACRAMENTAL THOUGHTS. 253 

feet likeness, till I become pleasing as thou art 
in the Father's sight, and meet to sit down with 
thee in the kingdom of thy glory, as thou thy- 
self hast sat down in the kingdom of thy Fa- 
ther. Amen. 



Blessed Jesus, ever near and ever present 
God, look, I beseech thee, into the close places 
of my soul, and behold its hidden anguish. I 
would hide nothing from thee. Thou hast 
known what it is to look for pity and there was 
none for comforters but there was no man. Oh 
by the anguish of thy soul that night have pity 
on my sorrows, and forgive my iniquity, for it is 
very great. Thou only knowest how great it 
is, and only thou canst behold me without ab- 
horrence. Men could not bear, angels could 
not bear to see what thou seest; how can I look 
into myself and live? Against thee, thee only 
have I sinned — against thy light and against 
thy love; against all that I have seen, and known 
and felt of thy amazing goodness. My Lord 
and my God, I have crucified thee, and put thee 
to shame, and chosen Barabbas before thee in 
my heart: the sin, the murderous sin for the love 
of which I have dishonored and disowned thee. 
On me be the shame, Lord. I am contented 



254 SACRAMENTAL THOUGHTS. 

to be vile and base, and abominable as I am, if 
only thou wilt get thee glory upon my shame, 
and save me from myself, from the bondage of 
this corruption. Thou God seest me, where I 
am; and thou hearest what they say, " God has 
forsaken him, persecute him, and take him, for 
there is none to deliver him." Shall thine ene- 
mies have the triumph? Shall they carry off the 
spoil from under the shadow of thy cross? I lay 
myself, I leave myself in the dust before thee. 
I come this day to thy altar, sinful, polluted, and 
ashamed; and bring all my guilt and all my 
misery with me, to try if it is beyond thy mercy 
and exceeds the value of thy most precious 
blood. I fix my eyes upon the emblems of thy 
death and passion, and gaze in thought upon the 
serpent as it was lifted up in the wilderness; in 
the midst of them that had provoked thee, and 
denied thee, and hardened their hearts, and made 
to themselves other gods, as I have; if perhaps 
I may be healed as they were. Lord, thou 
knowest all things, thou knowest that I hate the 
sin that has bound its scorpion folds about me, 
hand and foot, till 1 have no power or strength 
against it. Yet speak but the word, touch but 
with thy breath these bonds of my affliction, and 
they will fall away, like the thread of tow when 
it touches the fire. Lord, speak thou from thine 
altar this day, and say to my soul, " Go and sin 



SACRAMENTAL THOUGHTS. 255 



' IF ANY MAN SIN, WE HAVE AN ADVOCATE WITH THE FATHER, 
JESUS CHRIST THE RIGHTEOUS, AND HE IS THE PROPITIATION 
FOR OUR SINS." 

Throned Saviour, risen Lord, 

Behold a brother's tears, 
Far from thy Father's presence hear, 

A banish'd brother's prayers. 

It was but a look of thine, 

One look of love the same, 
That brake the false apostle's heart, 

And brought him back to shame. • 

turn that melting look on me, 
And break this bosom's frost; 

An Adam fall'n a second time, 
A prodigal twice lost. 

In vain I taste thy hallowed bread, 

And see thy wine outflow; 
Sweet emblems heretofore of love, 

Mementoes now of woe. 

Press'd now between unhallowed lips, 
Touch'd by a hand profane, 

1 see thy falling manna round, 

And gather it in vain. 

I cannot take, I cannot eat, 
• Nor call thee now mine own, 
Unfaithfulness has seared my heart, 
And sinned it into stone. 

But one blest look of thine could break, 

This heart's impenitence, 
One day-beum of reviving love, 

Would drive the coldness hence. 



256 SACRAMENTAL THOUGHTS. 

Jesus, turn and look on me, 
That look so loved, so known, 

As I was used to see thee once, 
Thy blest and faithful one. 

And these sweet pledges of thy love, 
Not always pledged in vain, 

let thy grieved Spirit come, 
And speak in them again. 

And take thine own, and find thy lost, 
And claim thy rifled gem, 

And get thee honor for thyself, 
Upon a brother's shame. 



PRAYER. 

Blessed Lord, since it has pleased thee to 
spread thy table, and exhibit before our eyes the 
sacred emblems of thy cross and passion, and 
all that thou hast done and suffered for us; give 
us, we beseech thee, clearly to see, and duly to 
appreciate all the benefits to be received thereby. 
Give us to realise our mysterious union with 
thee, and feed upon thee in our hearts, while we 
eat this bread, and drink this cup to our great 
and endless comfort. By the witness of thy 
Holy Spirit, by the verity of thy sacred word, 
by thy own sensible presence in our souls, certify 
to us, Holy Saviour, blessed Master, what it is 
to be one with thee, in the unity of the Spirit, 
in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life. 
As we press that bread between our teeth, give 



SACRAMENTAL THOUGHTS. 257 

ns to know that we were in thee, when thy body- 
was broken; as we wet our lips with that hal- 
lowed cup, give us to realise the fact, that we 
died with thee when thy blood flowed out; — 
died to sin, to misery, to hell; died to the law 
that could not cleanse us, and to the world that 
could not satisfy us, and to that death itself in 
all its terrors, which held our souls in bondage. 
We desire no life, no joy, no being but in thee; 
we fear no death, but that which would separate 
us from thee. When we draw near to take thy 
Holy Sacrament, give us to feel thy vivifying 
Spirit within, strengthening and refreshing our 
souls with a blessed assurance, that we are 
indeed made alive, created anew, born of thy 
Spirit, risen in thy resurrection, bound up in thy 
life, over which death hath no more power: — 
And in the taking of these elements, Lord our 
God, sustain the life thou hast imparted, uphold 
the faith thou hast given, keep our lamps burn- 
ing, and our souls expecting, until thou come 
again to be revealed in them whom thou hast 
chosen, and faith be swallowed up in sight, and 
hope in joy, and conflict in victory, and victory 
itself in everlasting peace. Glory be to thee, 
God most high. 



23 



258 SACRAMENTAL THOUGHTS. 



1 IF WE HAVE BEEN PLANTED TOGETHER IN THE LIKENESS OF 
HIS DEATH, WE SHALL BE ALSO IN THE LIKENESS OF HIS RESUR- 
RECTION." — Rom. VI, 5. 

Bound with thorns of mortal sorrow, 
As they once thy temples pressed, 
Bathed in dew T s of mental anguish, 
As they once suffused thy breast: 

Folly- stricken, worn and wearied, 
'Neath this sense of misery, 
Earth estranged and heaven distant, 
Jesus ! am I one with thee] 

Is this sigh that swells my bosom 
One of those that breathed in thee? 
Is this heart by sorrow broken, 
One with that which broke for me. 

If 'twas sin that pierced thy forehead* 
If 'twas shame that broke thy heart, 
In the likeness of thy dying, 
Well were mine a brother's part. 

Likeness of thy straitened spirit 
Longing for its resting-plaoe: 
Likeness of thy bitter crying, # 
For thy Father's hidden face: 

Blessed Jesus ! breathe a whisper, 
In my list'ning, longing ear; 
Witness of thy Holy Spirit, 
If it is thy cross I bear. 

Base desires crucifying, 
Shame and anguish welcome be; 
Germ of life and glory coming, 
If it likens me to Thee. 



SACRAMENTAL THOUGHTS. 259 



£ FOR WE BEING MANY ARE ONE BREAD, AND ONE BODY J FOR 
WE ARE ALL PARTAKERS OF THAT ONE BREAD." — 1 Coi*. X, 

17. 

; THERE SHALL NO SIGN BE GIVEN THEM BUT THE SIGN OF THE 

prophet jonas." — Mark iii, 12. 

When in that deepest deep 

Hidden from day, 
Hidden from all but Thee, 

The prophet lay: 

Dead to all sympathy 

From things below, 
No more a living one, 

Except in woe: 

Didst Thou, Lord of Life, 

In the dark fold 
Of Hell's eternal gates 

Thyself behold? 

Thyself in him, the doomed 

The outcast one — 
Forth of a sinking world 

In judgment thrown] 

Oh! in a deeper deep 

Behold us then — ■ 
And in these waters own 

Thyself again. 

As counted once for us 

Among the dead — 
That ocean weight of guilt 

About thy head: 

None to respond to thee 
Or feel, or hear — 



260 SACRAMENTAL THOUGHTS. 

Except the Eternal One — 
And He not there; 

He deafened to thy cry, 

By the wild roll 
Of those mysterious waves 

Upon thy soul. — 

By thy remember' d grief 
When thou wert thus; 

Oh! blessed Jesus, know 
Thyself in us. 

Partakers in thy death, 

And in thy fears — 
Oh! count our sorrows thine, 

And thine our tears. 

And thine the enemies 
That seek our shame — 

To blacken with our guilt 
Thy holy name. 

" Ye did it unto me"— 

Repeat that word 
Through Hell's malignant host 

Despairing heard. 

Say it in earth — in heaven, 

Thy people own — 
Oh! say it in our hearts, 

That we are " one." 



" THIS DO IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME." 

Remembrance! Is there one on earth 
But knows what that may mean, 
When spectral images come back, 
Of something that has been] 



SACRAMENTAL THOUGHTS. 261 

Something that neither time nor tears 
Have altered since it was — 
How often on a day serene, 
There comes a cloud across; 

A form, a voice, a countenance, 
The spot where deeds were done, 
And casts its sackcloth hues athwart 
The summer's mid-day sun. 

But most — Oh who of sinful mould 
But knows what memory is, 
When in the dark, deep thinking hours 
Of midnight wretchedness. 

It stands with its emblazon'd roll, 
The only visible, 
In its red hand the mixen cup 
Of a fore-tasted hell. 

Well knew they of the fallen soul 
In olden poets' theme, 
Who could invent no Paradise 
Without a Lethe's stream. 

It was for Thee, thou blessed one! 
In these sweet pledges given, 
It was for Thee alone to make 
Of memory's self a heaven. 

The hallowed grief, the cancelled guilt, 
The love-remitted debt; 
Thine is no cold oblivious cup — 
We need not to forget. 

Oh rather let remembrance be 
Our paradise above, 
Our whole eternity of bliss 
The memory of thy love. 



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